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[Xen-users] Re: DomU boot fails with can't find root on Fedora 6

To: "Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [Xen-users] Re: DomU boot fails with can't find root on Fedora 6
From: Ligesh <myself@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:22:54 +0530
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On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 03:36:54PM +0100, Petersson, Mats wrote:
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ligesh [mailto:myself@xxxxxxxxxx] 
> > Sent: 31 January 2007 14:26
> > To: Petersson, Mats
> > Cc: Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: DomU boot fails with can't find root on Fedora 6
> > 
> > 
> >  Hi Pete,
> > 
> >  Do we need separate initrd for each ostemplate? In the stock 
> > kernel I got from xensource on centos 4.4, I was able to boot 
> > all domUs using the same initrd, and I had thought that that 
> > was the standard way. This is a big hassle actually, that for 
> > each domU distro, you have to use different initrd images.
> 
> Don't know who "Pete" is, but... 

 I do have an issue with names. It should have been Mats. I guess, in my head 
your name was pete mattersson, since peter is a more common first name. :-) 

> 
> Of course, DomU is a pretty well-defined environment - unless you expose
> some hardware through the PCI hide/pass settings, your DomU will never
> see any real hardware, so you don't REALLY need a modular kernel, one
> with builtin drivers should be fine. That way you can eliminate the
> initrd modules altogether, since all drivers are included in the kernel.
> Obviously, Dom0 kernel has to cope with different types of SCSI, IDE,
> SATA, SAS, RAID controllers, network cards from different manufacturers,
> etc, etc. So building a kernel with all drivers included would make a
> pretty large kernel, and using modules here makes sense to save memory
> (since memory is only used by modules actually loaded). 
> 

 But it seems the fedora people have build the kernel without the xen drivers. 
As in, if you don't use initrd, then it will fail miserably by saying 
unrecognized device '/dev/vbd/2567', which is the xen harddisk. They have 
compiled the xen drivers as modules, and I read in some mailing list post that 
it was because it was absolutely necessary for anaconda to work or something. 
SO I guess, fedora is a dying distro and it is best to keep away from it. I am 
not really seeing any really enthuisiastic documentation on different aspects 
of virtualization, and mailing list conversation are also pretty much vague and 
lack any real information content--mostly people making guesswork.

 So finally, I think I will have to build custom kernel for fedora 6, which 
actually defeats the entire purpose of distro-built-in-with-xen.

 Thanks.





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