Quick instructions for installing a Debian Sarge VM on Xen
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/DebianSarge
PROCEDURE
Prepare your storage. You can use partitions, LVM volumes or simple file-based images. I choose file-based for the flexibility - for a real server you would NOT want to use a file-based because the IO sucks, use real partitions or LVM volumes.
Choosing a suitably large partition (/usr) I linked it into /opt/xen
mkdir /usr/xen ln -s /usr/xen /opt/xen
Bootstrap Debian into a file-based image (note: this is a meager setup of 1GB root / and 128MB swap, you'll likely want much more for a real-world VM)
mkdir -p /opt/xen/domains/vm01 dd if=/dev/zero of=/opt/xen/domains/vm01/diskimage bs=1024k count=1024 dd if=/dev/zero of=/opt/xen/domains/vm01/swapimage bs=1024k count=128 mkfs.ext3 /opt/xen/domains/vm01/diskimage mkswap /opt/xen/domains/vm01/swapimage mkdir /mnt/disk mount -o loop /opt/xen/domains/vm01/diskimage /mnt/disk apt-get install debootstrap #If necessary debootstrap --arch i386 sarge /mnt/disk http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian chroot /mnt/disk /bin/bash cd /etc; vi hostname hosts resolv.conf
Add minimal entries as desired.
Create an /etc/fstab file
/dev/sda1 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
Logout and unmount /mnt/disk
Now you can setup the first VM (aka vm01)
cat > /etc/xen/vm01.cfg kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-xenU" memory = 96 name = "vm01" dhcp = "dhcp" disk = [ 'file:/opt/xen/domains/vm01/diskimage,sda1,w','file:/opt/xen/domains/vm01/swapimage,sda2,w' ] root = "/dev/sda1 ro"
Start it
xm create vm01.cfg -c > Using config file "/etc/xen/vm01.cfg". > Started domain vm01, console on port 9601
Show it
xm list
Attach to it (already done if used -c above)
xm console vm01
Login as root (no password yet set), set the root password and update.
passwd root /usr/sbin/base-config aptitude update aptitude upgrade
Here are the additional steps I needed in customizing the initial debian image:
Disable tls libraries in domU
mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled
Setup tty1->tty6 (required for inittab)
cd /dev ./MAKEDEV hda sda tty1 tty2 tty3 tty4 tty5 tty6
Setup /etc/network/interfaces
cat > /etc/network/interfaces << EOF # 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 dhcp EOF
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