linux - How to prepare a Centos ISO for creation of Xen domU guest with xl (not xm or virt-install)

06
2014-04
  • strontiumDog

    I'm tearing my hair out.

    I will be scripting the creation of large numbers of small HVM (not PV) customer xen CentOS 6.5 guests on a CentOS 6.5 dom0. I therefore do not want to use virt-manager (I'm scripting). I also do not want to use xm as it's deprecated - and most of the docs on the web talk about using it.

    I want to use only the xl toolstack to create and manage my VMs. I've read the documentation for xl and the spin-off docs about specifying disk info in the cfg file. They don't give me practical advice as to how to take a CentOS6.5 minimal ISO and preparing it for use as a xen image and I cannot find a suitable guide anywhere else. I have the resources to set up a pxe-based install, but I'd rather keep the image local to the dom0 as it will be faster than transferring the data over the network.

    Surely someone here can at least point me in the right direction of such instructions! I can't believe it's this hard to find decent up-to-date documentation.

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    linux - Xen: Is it possible to run an installed Windows inside Xen?
  • Andrew J. Brehm

    Is it possible to run an already-installed Windows inside Xen, similar to how Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion can run a bootcamp Windows as a VM on Mac OS?

    My plan is, in a few weeks when Windows 7 is out, to buy a netbook with Windows 7 (assuming these beasts will exist) and install Linux with Xen on it so I can boot between Windows, Linux, and Xen with Xen running both the installed Linux and the installed Windows 7.

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  • Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

    In my experience, running an installed OS on virtualized hardware doesn't work well. Every time you switch back and forth the OS has to reconfigure itself. I'm not sure to what extent this applies to xen, but in VMWare it was extremely difficult to make it work properly and it would probably trip modern Windows (XP onwards) hardware activation (i.e. you'd have to get a new activation key from MS).

  • Area 51

    I'm currently running Win7 under Debian Xen (deb 64 bit, win7 32 bit).

    Runs fine, but only have 1G RAM right now -- I'm upgrading to 8G soon. Problems are no sound support and it keeps wanting me to register.