Setting Up Xen Dom0 on Fedora : Xen 3.4.1 with Linux Kernel 2.6.29 on Fedora 12

Please refer to for the latest stable Xen Dom0 solution.

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In this post, the detailed tutorial for setting up Xen 3.4.1 dom0 on top of Fedora 12 with kernel 2.6.29 will be introduced.

Hardware:

Dom0 hardware platform:

Motherboard: INTEL S5500BC S5500 Quad Core Xeon Server Board
CPU: 2 x Intel Quad Core Xeon E5520 2.26G (5.86GT/sec,8M,Socket 1366)
Memory: 4 x Kingston DDR-3 1333MHz 4GB ECC REG. CL9 DIMM w/Parity & Thermal Sensor
HD: 4 x WD WD10EARS 1 TB, SATA II 3Gb/s, 64 MB Cache

Disk Partitions:

[root@localhost vm0]# df -hT
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-LogVol_root
 ext4     50G   12G   38G  23% /
tmpfs        tmpfs    7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1     ext3    504M  110M  369M  23% /boot
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-LogVol_lhome
 ext4    858G   21G  794G   3% /lhome

Linux:

Fedora 12 x86_64, updated to Apr. 10, 2010.

No xen and libvirt installed:

 # rpm -qa | grep xen
 # rpm -qa | grep virt

And SELinux is diabled.

Packages:

Xen 3.4.1

linux-2.6.29-xen-r4-aka-suse-xenified-2.6.29-62.1: Download here.

download these packages and unzip them.

Build and install Xen

Uncompress xen and put all the source code files of xen to “/usr/src/xen/xen-3.4.1/”:

 # mkdir -p /usr/src/xen/
 # tar -xf xen-3.4.1.tar.gz -C /usr/src/xen/
 # cd /usr/src/xen/xen-3.4.1

Build xen, tools and docs:

# make -j16 dist-xen dist-tools dist-docs

You may need to install some packages that are required and listed.

Install xen:

 # cd dist
 # sh ./install.sh

Build and install Linux kernel

The .config file I used can be downloaded from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1qt7fnWrEczQTZkc2JfOFRHXzQ/view

My .config file can be used directly.

Or please use menuconfig to create one:

# make menuconfig

When using “make menuconfig“, some options require special attention:

    Subarchitecture Type (Enable Xen compatible kernel)
    ( ) PC-compatible
    (X) Enable Xen compatible kernel
    ( ) Support for ScaleMP vSMP
    Device Drivers --->
    XEN --->
    [*] Privileged Guest (domain 0)
    <*>Backend driver support
    <*>Block-device backend driver
    <*>Block-device tap backend driver
    <*> Network-device backend driver

After configuration, build and install this Linux kernel:

 # make -j16
 # make modules_install install

Create a grub entry

# vim /boot/grub/grub.conf

Then add this entry:

title Fedora (xen 3.4.1 - 2.6.29-xen-r4)
 root (hd0,0)
 kernel /xen-3.4.1.gz console=vga vga=ask noreboot
 module /vmlinuz-2.6.29-xen-r4 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-LogVol_root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us
 module /initramfs-2.6.29-xen-r4.img

The “root=” and other options will be different depending on the partitions of the system.

Configure services

Add xend and xendomains to services that automatically start when system boot.

 # chkconfig --add xend
 # chkconfig --add xendomains
 # chkconfig xend on
 # chkconfig xendomains on
 # chkconfig --list | grep xend
xend            0:off   1:off   2:on   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
xendomains      0:off   1:off   2:on   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

Disable ksmtuned service.

# chkconfig ksmtuned off

Reboot now

# reboot

After booting the system in the xen environment. the xm command can be used:

[root@localhost ~]# xm info
host                   : localhost.localdomain
release                : 2.6.29-xen-r4
version                : #1 SMP Mon Apr 12 00:41:42 HKT 2010
machine                : x86_64
nr_cpus                : 16
nr_nodes               : 1
cores_per_socket       : 4
threads_per_core       : 2
cpu_mhz                : 2266
hw_caps                : bfebfbff:28100800:00000000:00000340:009ce3bd:00000000:00000001:00000000
virt_caps              : hvm
total_memory           : 16321
free_memory            : 4
node_to_cpu            : node0:0-15
node_to_memory         : node0:4
xen_major              : 3
xen_minor              : 4
xen_extra              : .1
xen_caps               : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64
xen_scheduler          : credit
xen_pagesize           : 4096
platform_params        : virt_start=0xffff800000000000
xen_changeset          : unavailable
cc_compiler            : gcc version 4.4.3 20100127 (Red Hat 4.4.3-4) (GCC)
cc_compile_by          : root
cc_compile_domain      : localdomain
cc_compile_date        : Mon Apr 12 01:53:45 HKT 2010
xend_config_format     : 4

Then xm can be used to create and manage virtual machines on the server.

[root@localhost ~]# xm list
Name                                        ID   Mem VCPUs      State   Time(s)
Domain-0                                     0 15093    16     r-----    228.2
vm0                                          1  1024     2     -b----      4.4