Debian Sarge(ish) x86-64 Xen Installation

Following along a great debian-administration.org article, titled, “Debian Sid gets Xen 3.0”, I set up a minimal Debian Sarge AMD64 install from debian-31r0a-amd64-netinst.iso for use as a Xen development server. The full text of this post contains my step-by-step how-to on my successful installation.

I ran a default netinstall installation, selecting no additional software packages, and used the “multi-user workstation” partitioning scheme, which segregates the /, /usr, /var, /tmp, and /home partitions, with most of the disk using /home, where the Xen virtual machines will reside.

Bang the link below for my full notes!

Michael

———————————————————
Debian Sarge x86-64 Xen Notes – mshuler.devnet.lan

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/396

Minimal Debian Sarge install from debian-31r0a-amd64-netinst.iso
– default “multi-user workstation” partioning scheme

apt-get install vim
vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
10.6.203.170 mshuler mshuler.devnet.lan
10.6.203.171 mshuler1 mshuler1.devnet.lan
10.6.203.172 mshuler2 mshuler2.devnet.lan
10.6.203.173 mshuler3 mshuler3.devnet.lan
10.6.203.174 mshuler4 mshuler4.devnet.lan
10.6.203.175 mshuler5 mshuler5.devnet.lan

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

vi /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.6.203.170
netmask 255.255.255.128
gateway 10.6.203.129

vi /etc/apt/apt.conf

APT::Default-Release “stable”;

vi /etc/apt/source.list

#deb file:///cdrom/ sarge main

# Stable
deb http://mirror.espri.arizona.edu/debian-amd64/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirror.espri.arizona.edu/debian-amd64/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

# Testing
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

# Unstable
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

# Stable Security
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

vi /etc/apt/preferences

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 650

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 600

apt-get -t unstable install linux-image-2.6-amd64-k8 xen-hypervisor-3.0-amd64 xen-utils-3.0
(Without installing linux-image, my running kernel was in the REMOVE list)
shutdown -r now (just to be sure we have a good vanilla kernel)

apt-get -t unstable install linux-image-2.6-xen-amd64-k8

update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.16-2-xen-amd64-k8
(Build a new initrd since the xen package does not make one)

cd /boot
ln -s vmlinuz-2.6.16-2-xen-amd64-k8 xen-vmlinuz
ln -s initrd.img-2.6.16-2-xen-amd64-k8 xen-initrd.img
vi grub/menu.lst (add before BEGIN AUTOMAGIC… (if using a /boot partition the kernel will be /xen-3.0…))

title Xen 3.0 / XenLinux 2.6
kernel /boot/xen-3.0-amd64.gz noreboot
module /boot/xen-vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro
module /boot/xen-initrd.img

shutdown -r now (boot into xen dom0! whee!)

—–

Nice! The packages set up the init services, too:

mshuler@mshuler:~$ ls -l /etc/rc*.d/S*xen*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc2.d/S20xend -> ../init.d/xend
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc2.d/S21xendomains -> ../init.d/xendomains
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc3.d/S20xend -> ../init.d/xend
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc3.d/S21xendomains -> ../init.d/xendomains
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc4.d/S20xend -> ../init.d/xend
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc4.d/S21xendomains -> ../init.d/xendomains
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc5.d/S20xend -> ../init.d/xend
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2006-06-13 13:51 /etc/rc5.d/S21xendomains -> ../init.d/xendomains

vi /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp
(cat /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp|egrep -v ‘^#|^$’)

(xend-relocation-server yes)
(xend-relocation-hosts-allow ‘^localhost$’)
(network-script network-bridge) # <-- this is the edit (vif-script vif-bridge) (dom0-min-mem 196) (dom0-cpus 0) apt-get -t unstable install bridge-utils iproute sysfsutils xen-tools (there is no amd64 package for libc6-xen per the doc, so I skipped it...) mkdir /home/xen vi /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf (cat /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf|egrep -v '^#|^$') dir = /home/xen size = 2Gb # Disk image size. memory = 128Mb # Memory size swap = 128Mb # Swap size fs = ext3 # use EXT3 filesystems dist = sid # Default distribution to install. gateway = 10.6.203.129 netmask = 255.255.255.128 passwd = 1 kernel = /boot/xen-vmlinuz initrd = /boot/xen-initrd.img mirror = http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ xen-create-image --hostname=mshuler1 --ip=10.6.203.171 --passwd xm create mshuler1.cfg -c 🙂 Log in! To detach from xenconsoled: Ctrl+] And with minor changes (hostname, IP) to the above xen-create-image command, I can set up more VM's for the rest of my IP space. Hope this helps someone (and me to set up more)!