Re: apt-get install xen-tools recursion

[Elliott Mitchell <ehem+xen@xxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2025 at 02:52:56PM -0400, Frank Eskesen wrote:
> 
> I should have mentioned that I'm testing the installation procedure using a
> VirtualBox virtual machine.

As David Hill asked first, are you sure you really want to do *this*?

While running a hypervisor on a hypervisor is possible in theory, x86
makes this *extremely* difficult.  Starting by running Linux on Xen and
letting Domain 0 take the entire machine is likely similar to the
environment you're thinking of.  This is rather more feasible.

> (I'm not really a Xen user yet, I'm just going through the beginner's
> installation guide on the Wiki:
> https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Beginners_Guide)
> 
> I can't install Debian xen-tools because it doesn't complete, it just starts
> over again. I suspect that's because the last entry in the list of packages
> to be installed is xen-tools.
> 
> I think that it's possible to get around the problem by installing the
> xen-tools packages individually, but haven't done this yet.

This sounds like you're trying to install Xen from source, yet you're
starting from a Debian Linux installation.  Are you sure this is what
you desire?

I suspect you might instead want to start looking at Debian's wiki:
https://wiki.debian.org/Xen

I though would suggest starting by running:
`apt install xen-system grub-xen-host`

(the Debian wiki's recommendation of `apt install xen-hypervisor`
leaves the utilities uninstalled and that isn't too helpful)

Once you're a bit futher along, https://wiki.debian.org/PvGrub is rather
valuable (this is why I suggest grub-xen-host).


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