Re: [Xen-users] Re: iscsi and block-attach with GPLPV

[Matthieu Patou <mat@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi fajar,

I'm taking the opportunity to share my 2 cent tips: every month there is 
a guy comming to our facility to update software with an external hard 
drive for our windows 2008 server (not r2) runned as a xen HVM virtual 
server so I had to find a way to allow easily connect the hard drive. 
For some reason usb_add do not work well with usb hard drives with 
windows so I am using xm block-attach.
I turns out that to me not all the frontend devices are equivalent as 
for some of w2k8 saw them completely and for some others I had the "This 
driver is not configured correctly".
Right now I use xm block-attach w2k8dom phy:/dev/sdc hdd w and it's OK 
and with hdb it's not !
I found that if I want to be able to readd a disk for this frontend 
device I have to do more than xm block-detach w2k8dom frontend_id, more 
precisely before issuing this command I go in the device manager an 
search for the "Xen PV DISK SCSI Disk Device" that correspond to the 
hard drive that I want to remove (I do xm block-list w2k8dom to get the 
frontend_id then I look at the parent attribute in properties -> Detail 
the last number is the frontend_id), and then I do a right click -> 
Uninstall.
I've been working like this for more than 1 year and most of the time 
it's Ok (once I had to reboot the server because it didn't wanted to see 
the hard drive).
My setup is a bit different from your:

* xen 3.2.1 (from debian)
* pv drivers 0.10.0.86 (worked also like this with 0.9.xxx)
* windows 2008 server


HTH
Matthieu.
> # xm block-attach win2008-template phy:/dev/sda hdb w
>
> at this time the windows console says a new xen vbd device is
> installed successfully. At least this is different from the last
> version. After that, a popup appears asking to restart, and device
> manager shows a new xen block device with exclamation mark, and
> properties says "This driver is not configured correctly (Code 1). You
> need to restart your computer before the changes you made to this
> device will take effect."
>
> qemu-dm log attached.
>
> After restart, I can safely remove the disk using "xm block-detach"
> and Windows says "safe to remove hardware". Attach-detach the disk (or
> other disk image) as hdb works as expected now. However attaching it
> as another device (e.g. xvda) brings the "you need to restart" dialog.
> So for "xm block-attach", it seems to work, but with the issue of
> Windows needs to restart once after recognizing a new block device.
> Why is that?.
_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users