Debian/GNU Squeeze with Xen 4.0 - Part 1 - base system

This is the first post regarding Debian/GNU Linux running Xen 4.0 on a new piece of hardware.

This posting will cover base OS installation:
- Preparation/Partitioning
- Base Debian/GNU Linux installation on Dom0
- Xen packages installation
- Make Xen-Kernel default for Grub2

Upcoming posts will cover the following items:

- Installation of Debian/GNU Linux as DomU
- Installation of Windows Vista as DomU (using HVM)
- Installation of OpenSolaris 11 as DomU (using HVM)
- Installation of BDS systems as DomU



Hardware description:

Motherboard: Intel DQ57TM
CPU: Intel Core i7
RAM: 16 GB RAM
HDD: 2x500 GB SATA (internal)

Cost (Aug 2010): 1400 Euro

Partitioning:

I want RAID 1 (mirroring) on both disks.
I want RAID 1 for / file system and swap
I want LVM on RAID 1 for all Virtual Guest systems

Trouble:

The normal Debian/GNU Linux Lenny (stable) network installation CD does not recognize the network interface (e10000).
Base installation required Debian /GNU Linux Squeeze testing network installation cdrom.

During Partitioning:

- Create empty DOS partition label on both disks
- Add RAID Partition for /
- Add RAID Partition for swap
- Add RAID Partition for LVM

/dev/sd[a|b]1 - 15 GB - Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sd[a|b]2 - 1 GB - Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sd[a|b]3 - 471 GB - Linux raid autodetect

Within the Debian installer I choosed to not use any partitions on my empty LVM volume.
Logical Volumes will be created after Xen setup.

Finish base installation. Do not select any default installation method in taksel.

Installation of Xen Kernel


After first boot into new installed system I installed xen-linux-system-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64:

apt-get install xen-linux-system-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64

Now I rebooted into Xen Kernel. Since Debian/GNU Linux Version squeeze uses grub2 I reviewed the list of available Kernels and wrote down the number of the Xen Kernel.

Then I added "GRUB_DEFAULT=6" into /etc/default/grub and run update-grub afterwards.

Network Configuration

Since I want my Virtual Systems to be available from remote I decided to use Bridging on the network interface.

In /etc/network/interfaces I setup eth0 as bridge slave.
Then I added a new bridge interface with name xenbr0.

In /etc/xen/xend-config.spi I disabled the bridge-network section by giving /bin/true as parameter.

Xen: 4gb fixup message and rpmstrap CentOS4

We are running some Xen servers (both based upon Debian GNU/Linux 4.0).

We run CentOS 4 and Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 as guest systems.

We initialize each guest system using rpmstrap for CentOS and debootstrap for Debian.

The rpmstrap package on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 does not provide support for CentOS 4.
Therefore we adopted some changes from the provided centos3 script.
Download file

After initializing the guest systems console and logfiles get spammed with messages regarding 4gb fixup.

Solution for 4gb fixup messages:

Within the guest system remove /lib/tls

# Copyright 2005 Progeny Linux Systems, Inc.
# Copyright 2007 iconmobile group
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
#
# Authors: Sam Hart
# Jake Tabke
# Derrik Pates
# Juraj Bednar (x86_64 support)
# Martin Alfke (CentOS4)
suite_notes() {
cat <CentOS 4 Suite Script
---------------------
Builds a basic CentOS 4 bootstrap.
Authors: Sam Hart, Jake Tabke, Derrik Pates, Juraj Bednar
EOF
}
work_out_mirror() {
local big_mirror_list=""
case $ARCH in
i[3456]86)
big_mirror_list=$(cat <http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/
http://centos.cs.ucr.edu/centos/centos/4.1/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/
http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/caoslinux/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/
http://centos.absinet.net/centos/4.1/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/
EOF
)
;;
x86_64)
big_mirror_list=$(cat <http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/
http://centos.cs.ucr.edu/centos/centos/4.1/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/
http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/caoslinux/centos/4/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/
http://centos.absinet.net/centos/4.1/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/
EOF
)
;;
*)
die "Arch $ARCH is unsupported"
;;
esac
set_mirrors $big_mirror_list
}
work_out_rpms() {
case $ARCH in
i[3456]86)
RPMS=$(cat <0:setup-2.5.37-1.3.noarch.rpm
1:filesystem-2.3.0-1.i386.rpm
2:basesystem-8.0-4.noarch.rpm
3:tzdata-2006g-1.EL4.noarch.rpm
4:glibc-common-2.3.4-2.25.i386.rpm
5:libgcc-3.4.6-3.i386.rpm
6:glibc-2.3.4-2.25.i686.rpm
7:mktemp-1.5-20.i386.rpm
8:termcap-5.4-3.noarch.rpm
9:libtermcap-2.0.8-39.i386.rpm
10:bash-3.0-19.3.i386.rpm
11:ncurses-5.4-13.i386.rpm
12:zlib-1.2.1.2-1.2.i386.rpm
13:info-4.7-5.i386.rpm
14:libselinux-1.19.1-7.2.i386.rpm
15:findutils-4.1.20-7.el4.1.i386.rpm
15:pcre-4.5-3.2.RHEL4.i386.rpm
16:grep-2.5.1-32.2.i386.rpm
16:words-3.0-3.noarch.rpm
17:libattr-2.4.16-3.i386.rpm
18:libacl-2.2.23-5.i386.rpm
19:cracklib-dicts-2.7-29.i386.rpm
19:cracklib-2.7-29.i386.rpm
20:libstdc++-3.4.6-3.i386.rpm
21:db4-4.2.52-7.1.i386.rpm
22:glib-1.2.10-15.i386.rpm
23:glib2-2.4.7-1.i386.rpm
24:sed-4.1.2-5.EL4.i386.rpm
25:gawk-3.1.3-10.1.i386.rpm
26:centos-release-4-4.2.i386.rpm
27:psmisc-21.4-4.1.i386.rpm
28:iproute-2.6.9-3.EL4.3.i386.rpm
29:iputils-20020927-18.EL4.3.i386.rpm
30:chkconfig-1.3.13.4-1.i386.rpm
31:e2fsprogs-1.35-12.4.EL4.i386.rpm
32:ethtool-1.8-4.i386.rpm
33:mingetty-1.07-3.i386.rpm
34:net-tools-1.60-37.EL4.8.i386.rpm
35:popt-1.9.1-18_nonptl.i386.rpm
35:readline-4.3-13.i386.rpm
36:audit-libs-1.0.14-1.EL4.i386.rpm
36:audit-1.0.14-1.EL4.i386.rpm
36:mkinitrd-4.2.1.8-1.i386.rpm
36:kernel-2.6.9-42.EL.i686.rpm
36:hotplug-2004_04_01-7.7.i386.rpm
36:libsepol-1.1.1-2.i386.rpm
36:device-mapper-1.02.07-4.0.RHEL4.i386.rpm
36:hwdata-0.146.22.EL-1.noarch.rpm
36:tar-1.14-10.RHEL4.i386.rpm
36:cpio-2.5-9.RHEL4.i386.rpm
36:gzip-1.3.3-15.rhel4.i386.rpm
36:usbutils-0.11-6.1.i386.rpm
36:lvm2-2.02.06-6.0.RHEL4.i386.rpm
36:less-382-4.i386.rpm
36:MAKEDEV-3.15.2-3.i386.rpm
36:pam-0.77-66.17.i386.rpm
36:initscripts-7.93.25.EL-1.centos4.i386.rpm
36:coreutils-5.2.1-31.4.i386.rpm
36:SysVinit-2.85-34.3.i386.rpm
36:shadow-utils-4.0.3-60.RHEL4.i386.rpm
36:udev-039-10.15.EL4.i386.rpm
36:util-linux-2.12a-16.EL4.20.i386.rpm
36:sysklogd-1.4.1-26_EL.i386.rpm
36:which-2.16-4.i386.rpm
36:module-init-tools-3.1-0.pre5.3.2.i386.rpm
36:procps-3.2.3-8.4.i386.rpm
37:beecrypt-3.1.0-6.i386.rpm
38:bzip2-libs-1.0.2-13.EL4.3.i386.rpm
39:bzip2-1.0.2-13.EL4.3.i386.rpm
40:elfutils-libelf-0.97.1-3.i386.rpm
40:binutils-2.15.92.0.2-21.i386.rpm
41:elfutils-0.97.1-3.i386.rpm
42:gdbm-1.8.0-24.i386.rpm
43:gmp-4.1.4-3.i386.rpm
44:krb5-libs-1.3.4-33.i386.rpm
45:openssl-0.9.7a-43.10.i686.rpm
46:libxml2-2.6.16-6.i386.rpm
47:python-2.3.4-14.2.i386.rpm
48:libxml2-python-2.6.16-6.i386.rpm
48:file-4.10-2.EL4.4.i386.rpm
48:perl-5.8.5-36.RHEL4.i386.rpm
48:perl-Filter-1.30-6.i386.rpm
48:patch-2.5.4-20.i386.rpm
49:rpmdb-CentOS-4.4-0.20060823.i386.rpm
49:rpm-build-4.3.3-18_nonptl.i386.rpm
49:rpm-libs-4.3.3-18_nonptl.i386.rpm
49:rpm-4.3.3-18_nonptl.i386.rpm
50:rpm-python-4.3.3-18_nonptl.i386.rpm
51:wget-1.10.2-0.40E.i386.rpm
52:python-elementtree-1.2.6-4.2.1.i386.rpm
52:python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.i386.rpm
52:python-urlgrabber-2.9.8-2.noarch.rpm
52:expat-1.95.7-4.i386.rpm
52:sqlite-3.3.3-1.2.i386.rpm
52:yum-2.4.3-1.c4.noarch.rpm
53:nano-1.2.4-1.i386.rpm
54:openldap-2.2.13-6.4E.i386.rpm
54:cyrus-sasl-2.1.19-5.EL4.i386.rpm
54:cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.19-5.EL4.i386.rpm
55:libuser-0.52.5-1.el4.1.i386.rpm
56:passwd-0.68-10.1.i386.rpm
EOF
)
;;
x86_64)
RPMS=$(cat <0:setup-2.5.37-1.3.noarch.rpm
1:filesystem-2.3.0-1.x86_64.rpm
2:basesystem-8.0-4.noarch.rpm
3:tzdata-2006a-1.EL4.noarch.rpm
4:glibc-common-2.3.4-2.19.x86_64.rpm
5:libgcc-3.4.5-2.x86_64.rpm
6:glibc-2.3.4-2.19.x86_64.rpm
7:mktemp-1.5-20.x86_64.rpm
8:termcap-5.4-3.noarch.rpm
9:libtermcap-2.0.8-39.x86_64.rpm
10:bash-3.0-19.2.x86_64.rpm
11:ncurses-5.4-13.x86_64.rpm
12:zlib-1.2.1.2-1.2.x86_64.rpm
13:info-4.7-5.x86_64.rpm
14:libselinux-1.19.1-7.x86_64.rpm
15:findutils-4.1.20-7.x86_64.rpm
15:pcre-4.5-3.2.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
16:grep-2.5.1-31.x86_64.rpm
16:words-3.0-3.noarch.rpm
17:libattr-2.4.16-3.x86_64.rpm
18:libacl-2.2.23-5.x86_64.rpm
19:cracklib-dicts-2.7-29.x86_64.rpm
19:cracklib-2.7-29.x86_64.rpm
20:libstdc++-3.4.5-2.x86_64.rpm
21:db4-4.2.52-7.1.x86_64.rpm
22:glib-1.2.10-15.x86_64.rpm
23:glib2-2.4.7-1.x86_64.rpm
24:sed-4.1.2-4.x86_64.rpm
25:gawk-3.1.3-10.1.x86_64.rpm
26:centos-release-4-3.2.x86_64.rpm
27:psmisc-21.4-4.x86_64.rpm
28:iproute-2.6.9-3.x86_64.rpm
29:iputils-20020927-18.EL4.2.x86_64.rpm
30:chkconfig-1.3.13.3-2.x86_64.rpm
31:e2fsprogs-1.35-12.3.EL4.x86_64.rpm
32:ethtool-1.8-4.x86_64.rpm
33:mingetty-1.07-3.x86_64.rpm
34:net-tools-1.60-37.EL4.6.x86_64.rpm
35:popt-1.9.1-13_nonptl.x86_64.rpm
35:readline-4.3-13.x86_64.rpm
36:audit-libs-1.0.12-1.EL4.x86_64.rpm
36:audit-1.0.12-1.EL4.x86_64.rpm
36:mkinitrd-4.2.1.6-1.x86_64.rpm
36:kernel-2.6.9-34.EL.x86_64.rpm
36:hotplug-2004_04_01-7.6.x86_64.rpm
36:libsepol-1.1.1-2.x86_64.rpm
36:device-mapper-1.02.02-3.0.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
36:hwdata-0.146.18.EL-1.noarch.rpm
36:tar-1.14-9.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
36:cpio-2.5-8.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
36:gzip-1.3.3-15.rhel4.x86_64.rpm
36:usbutils-0.11-6.1.x86_64.rpm
36:lvm2-2.02.01-1.3.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
36:less-382-4.x86_64.rpm
36:MAKEDEV-3.15.2-3.x86_64.rpm
36:pam-0.77-66.14.x86_64.rpm
36:initscripts-7.93.24.EL-1.1.centos4.x86_64.rpm
36:coreutils-5.2.1-31.2.x86_64.rpm
36:SysVinit-2.85-34.3.x86_64.rpm
36:shadow-utils-4.0.3-60.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
36:udev-039-10.12.EL4.x86_64.rpm
36:util-linux-2.12a-16.EL4.16.x86_64.rpm
36:sysklogd-1.4.1-26_EL.x86_64.rpm
36:which-2.16-4.x86_64.rpm
36:module-init-tools-3.1-0.pre5.3.2.x86_64.rpm
36:procps-3.2.3-8.3.x86_64.rpm
37:beecrypt-3.1.0-6.x86_64.rpm
38:bzip2-libs-1.0.2-13.EL4.3.x86_64.rpm
39:bzip2-1.0.2-13.EL4.3.x86_64.rpm
40:elfutils-libelf-0.97-5.x86_64.rpm
40:binutils-2.15.92.0.2-18.x86_64.rpm
41:elfutils-0.97-5.x86_64.rpm
42:gdbm-1.8.0-24.x86_64.rpm
43:gmp-4.1.4-3.x86_64.rpm
44:krb5-libs-1.3.4-27.x86_64.rpm
45:openssl-0.9.7a-43.8.x86_64.rpm
46:libxml2-2.6.16-6.x86_64.rpm
47:python-2.3.4-14.1.x86_64.rpm
48:libxml2-python-2.6.16-6.x86_64.rpm
48:file-4.10-2.EL4.3.x86_64.rpm
48:perl-5.8.5-24.RHEL4.x86_64.rpm
48:perl-Filter-1.30-6.x86_64.rpm
48:patch-2.5.4-20.x86_64.rpm
49:rpmdb-CentOS-4.3-0.20060315.x86_64.rpm
49:rpm-build-4.3.3-13_nonptl.x86_64.rpm
49:rpm-libs-4.3.3-13_nonptl.x86_64.rpm
49:rpm-4.3.3-13_nonptl.x86_64.rpm
50:rpm-python-4.3.3-13_nonptl.x86_64.rpm
51:wget-1.10.2-0.40E.x86_64.rpm
52:centos-yumconf-4-4.5.noarch.rpm
52:yum-2.4.2-2.centos4.noarch.rpm
53:nano-1.2.4-1.x86_64.rpm
54:openldap-2.2.13-4.x86_64.rpm
54:cyrus-sasl-2.1.19-5.EL4.x86_64.rpm
54:cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.19-5.EL4.x86_64.rpm
55:libuser-0.52.5-1.el4.1.x86_64.rpm
56:passwd-0.68-10.1.x86_64.rpm
EOF
)
;;
*)
# No clue
;;
esac
}
print_rpms() {
local rpm_list=$(echo "$RPMS" | sed "s/[[:digit:]]\+://")
echo "RPMs for suite $RPMSUITE and arch $ARCH"
for a in $rpm_list
do
echo " : $a"
done
}
install_rpms() {
install_by_pass $RPMS
}
suite_details() {
for a in $RPMS
do
echo $a
done
}

creating cpan rpm packages

Since RedHat does deliver a very small subset of CPAN modules I made lots of RPM packages.
Sometimes the rpm addons for perl based packages which find all necessary dependencies are broken.

This is specially for test scripts that use the eval function of perl to find wether any specific package is necessary on a platform.
The find-provides and find-requires files do not honor the findings of eval.

To disable automatic requirement checking add the following lines to your spec file:

%define _use_internal_dependency_generator 0
%define __find_provides /usr/lib/rpm/redhat/find-provides.sh
%define __find_requires %{nil}

But:

do not forget to set requires and provides manually!!

additional network routes

On RedHat things are a little different - even when switching to a newer version.

On RedHat ES 4 additional network routes are set up the following way:

- create the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-"ifacename"

add the following lines:

ADDRESS0="networkaddress"
NETMASK0="netmask"
GATEWAY0="gateway"