kekoa vincent

Working with virtualization in the past has been a challenge, as far as open source virtualization that is, mainly using the Xen virtualization software.  Configuring kernels, pages and pages of tutorials and still it has been difficult to produce an easy to use solution of virtual machines.

Almost a year after I initially tried to set up Xen with Gentoo, I am going to do it this time with Ubuntu, and hopefully with great ease... 

Installing Dom0

First I popped in my freshly burned CD and installed Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition. Just a vanilla install, with no servers selected to install.  This is going to be a bare minimal installation for the Xen Dom0 host.

My system, an old HP Netserver lp1000r:

• Dual Pentium III(oh baby!)
• 1GB ECC Ram
• 36.4 GB Ultra3 SCSI HD
• Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Now, before you laugh at me, remember I am not made of money and I have had this 1U Rackmount server to play with for a year or so that I bought from a surplus sale.  This is mainly an experiment, and if successful, I may use this as a developmental server.

I partitioned my vast HD like so:

• 512MB swap
• 2GB DomU /
• 17GB Host VM
• 17GB Host VM

The idea is to have a minimalist Linux installation that will nicely fit in a 2GB partition, and it will host additional VMs, I'm thinking two at this juncture, perhaps I will partition differently later to allow for additional hosts.

After the installation of ubuntu(about 15 mins), I wanted to install an ssh server, so I can do the rest of the installation from the comfort of my desktop PC.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

It politely asks you to re-insert the cd, and after doing so, you instantly have a working ssh server.

Install Xen

Now, to install the xen software, we easily use the command: 

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-xen-server 

 While I'm waiting for this to download and install, I must admit that I have grown to love apt-get, which is perhaps interesting as I am a former Gentoo purist.  I think apt-get gets it right every time, I have grown past the fanaticism of having to compile everything from source.  I don't see the advantage anymore, I see greater advantage to being able to easily install software, and be able to use it now, rather than waiting 12 hours to compile.

Now to edit the config: 

nano /etc/xen/xend_config.sxp 

Abort!

I was continually getting kernel errors, and could not find a quick fix, so for stability sake I aborted Ubuntu as server, and will go to the grand-daddy, Debian.