Xen : NetInstall a PV Debian domU

I got my first domU working…

Here are the steps, please read all of them before to proceed :

1. I installed a fresh Lenny (with a VG for VMs) with only xen, ssh and vim
2. I created a LV called debianVM
3. I downloaded xm-debian.cfg from the debian site and renamed it to debian.cfg
4. I changed the line disk = [ .... ] to
   disk = [ 'phy:vg1/debianVM,xvda,w' ]
   You can remark that thereis no kernel, no ramdisk and no root option.
5. in a terminal, I entered :
   xm create debian.cfg install=true
   You need to know that xm-debian.cfg downloads two archives : vmlinuz and initrd.gz that are used at the vm creation step
6. I entered xm console debian then I got the debian ncurses installer which was a great news
7. I continued the installation as usual
8. Once the installation completes the VM shuts down
9. I tried to boot it but this fails…
10. I edited the debian.cfg and commented whole the section Debian Installer specific variables
11. I added these lines :
    
kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-xen-686"
ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-xen-686"
root = "/dev/xvda1"

    The kernel and ramdisk are created at the xen installation on the Lenny
12. I started the VM xm create -c debian and got the login prompt
13. network is ok, I can connect to it over SSH, the VM is stable, a pleasure

I will see now how to install a domU from an iso or CD, because I can’t have an Internet access all the time and I don’t have an internal repository…

Install a Xen PV domU from CD or ISO

I’m trying to have my first domU working…

As a first step, I want to install my PV domU using a CD.
This simple thing is really hard to realise with a PV Xen system, the lack of documentation about this is

impressive.

I had many errors :

Waiting for root file system ... ...
or
no init found

I used this syntax :

disk = [ 'phy:hdc,hdc:cdrom' ]
boot = "d"
root = "/dev/hdc ro"

I know that the root “/dev/hdc ro” is not correct at all, but I tried.
As I don’t have a full Internet access, to ask for help is not simple…
But I found this :

Currently, there’s no paravirtual CDROM driver available. So in PV guest, you can only add a iso image as a disk and cannot change this disk at runtime. But as a workaround, you can detach it and re-attach another iso as the same frontend.

I don’t have a VT enabled hardware, so I tried an iso without success… pffff

I use Vmware ESX at works, so I thought it won’t be difficult to get a domU working, but sincerly it is.

Trying Xen with VMKnoppix

Talks about my first experience with Xen LiveCD on a Dell D610