Note: There are my personal and minimal notes. Find a complete instruction on the official Fedora Core
website
- Install the Xen kernel
First of all, I installed the Xen-enabled Linux kernel by typing
yum install kernel-xen0
- Make sure the new installed kernel will be loaded after reboot by editing grub.donf.
The first menu entry in grub.conf has the number 0.
vi /etc/grub.conf
- Prepare Fedora Source (installation files)
I have wget'ed recursive the Fedora files from a public mirror to my local hard drive.
This will increase the speed of a new installation of new virtual servers. Create a directory
(e.g. fc5) accessible through your local web server and get the required image files:
mkdir /var/www/html/fc5
cd /var/www/html/fc5
wget -r ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/5/i386/os/
Use an appropriate mirror nearest to your location.
You will later refer to these installation files during the guest system setup. A quick note: It's a good time to verify the current IP address of your host system. The IP address of your
local webserver that is hosting these installation files must not be typed as localhost or 127.0.0.1 but smth like 192.168.1.123.
- Prepare a location of the system environment
This step might not be necessary but I thought it's a good advice to keep track of the
location of the virtual system image by adding a dedicated user on the host system.
I will assign system images to /home/virtual/xenbox1 later.
useradd -c "Fedora Xen" virtual
-
Building another Fedora Guest System
As root:
# xenguest-install.py
What is the name of your virtual machine? virtual2
How much RAM should be allocated (in megabytes)? 256
→ At least 256 MB. You may later change this value during run time.
What would you like to use as the disk (path)? /home/virtual/xenbox2
How large would you like the disk to be (in gigabytes)? 6
What is the install location? http://192.168.1.2/fc5/pub/linux/fedora-core/5/i386/os/
You could also give these arguments as parameters on a single lilne:
# xenguest-install.py -n virtual1 -f /home/virtual/xenbox1 -r 256 -l http://192.168.1.2/fc5/pub/linux/fedora-core/5/i386/os/
- At this stage, you have to decide wether to use text or graphical mode view during the setup. Text
mode is easy but the setup with vnc is pretty cool!
-
View after successful installation of a new virtual server.
Press Enter to (virtual) reboot.
-
(Virtual) booting
Startup your guest system by typing
xm create -c virtual1
-
I'm sure you want to know this tip as well:
How to enable autostart guest servers after reboot of the host system?
cd /etc/xen/auto
ln -s /etc/xen/virtual1
Further references
-
Linux / Xen
- Reference
Building Virtual Machines on Xen. Command line options of xenguest-install.py
digitalhermit.com/linux/xen/
-
Fedora Xen - Reference
Official quickstart with virtualized servers on FC5
fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraXenQuickstartFC5
-
Linux / Xen - Reference
Virtualization with Xen. My personal notes.
infocopter.com/know-how/linux/xen.html
See also:
Nfs.html#fc5
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