Upgrading Xensource Debian Etch guests to Lenny
Debian Lenny has been released, so I’ve started upgrading some of my Xen virtual servers. For Etch, Xensource shipped their own modified PV kernel package (2.6.18 based). With Lenny the same kernel can be used, or the standard Debian xen kernel (2.6.26 based) can be used instead.
Upgrading the userland is identical to a physical server – instructions are contained within the Debian Lenny release notes.
To use the Debian packaged 2.6.26 kernel, several minor changes have to be made as per this form post:
- Install the linux-image-2.6-xen-686 package (which depends on the latest xen kernel)
- Re-order the kernels in /boot/grub/menu.lst so the Debian 2.6.26 kernel is the first (and therefore the default)
- Add “console=hvc0″ to the end of the 2.6.26 kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, so it reads “kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-xen-686 root=/dev/xvda1 ro console=hvc0“
- edit /etc/inittab, find the line that looks like “1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1″ and add another line: “0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 hvc0″
Then reboot the system, it should boot the new kernel.
Xensource doesn’t display the grub menu, it just seems to boot straight into the default option (even though I have “timeout 10″ specified in the config). There must be a secret keypress or something to make it show the menu, but I don’t know what it is because the last step just worked for me!
Edit: Theoretically you shouldn’t need to use the -xen kernel variant, as the -686-bigmem kernel also supports running paravirtualised in domU. With Xensource 5.0 this boots fine, but Xensource’s xen-tools refuse to start so XenCenter reports the status as “unknown”. With the -xen kernel xen-tools start fine.
Tags: Debian, Lenny, Virtualisation, Xen
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
[...] & resumed (while the xen host rebooted). This caused a problem on the VMs I’ve upgraded to Debian Lenny: These messages were repeatedly logged: clocksource/0: Time went backwards: ret=18f26176a5 [...]