Re: Installing Debian HVM DomU on Xen: Grub installation error

[Elliott Mitchell <ehem+xen@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 03:42:53PM +0100, Paul Leiber wrote:
> Am 05.01.26 um 01:48 schrieb Elliott Mitchell:

> > I suggest you take a look at Debian's wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/Xen)
> > as that is nominally supposed to be accurate.  Though looks like some
> > valuable pieces of information have gone missing.
> > 
> > You likely first want to go to /etc/xen and example the files named
> > "xlexample.*" for examples of what the actual VM configurations look
> > like (alas these aren't consistent).  Ones in /etc/xen/auto will be
> > automatically started after boot.
> > 
> > You almost certainly want to install the `grub-xen-host` package.
> > 
> > For Debian guests you likely want to set `type = "pvh"` and then
> > `kernel = "/usr/lib/grub-xen/grub-i386-xen_pvh.bin"`.  This gets you a
> > PVH VM with GRUB as the bootloader.
> 
> As for your reference to the Debian wiki, I am afraid that in this specific
> case, it rather has contributed to my brainfog. The site on Debian DomU
> installation only provides an example using HVM [1]. It clearly needs
> updating (as do many other resources on Xen, alas). The Debian wiki site on
> Xen [2] is a bit better, but lacks specific information on the DomU
> installation process. The link to the Xen wiki that Nils provided [3] seems
> to be the best guide on how to install Debian when not using xen-tools.
> 
> I will likely stick with xen-tools though, as long as it is working. It's
> really convenient to execute one command and get a fully set up DomU without
> interaction with the installer. Too bad it is not maintained anymore.

Seems updates to the Debian wiki have made it worse rather than better.
I think it was better a while back:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200514141944/https://wiki.debian.org/Xen

Appears the page is still there:
https://wiki.debian.org/PvGrub

Yet it has been lost from the list:
https://wiki.debian.org/CategoryXen

I never touched xen-tools.  The instructions I found for how to configure
domains were good enough to get me started, then exploration got me to
where I needed to be.  PvGRUB is quite important, it works very well for
Linux and avoids the security concerns of Qemu in domain 0.


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