XenServer Software Development Kit Guide 4.1.0

XenServer API extensions

xe vm-param-set uuid=uuid disable_pv_vnc=1

2. Start the VM.

3. Use the CLI to retrieve the underlying domain ID of the VM with:

xe vm-list params=dom-id uuid=uuid --minimal

4. On the host console, connect to the text console directly by:

/usr/lib/xen/bin/xenconsole domid

This configuration is an advanced procedure, and we do not recommend that the text console is directly used

for heavy I/O operations. Instead, connect to the guest via SSH or some other network-based connection

mechanism.

5.2. Paravirtual Linux installation

The installation of paravirtual Linux guests is complicated by the fact that a Xen-aware kernel must be boot-

ed, rather than simply installing the guest via hardware-assistance. This does have the benefit of providing

near-native installation speed due to the lack of emulation overhead. XenServer supports the installation of

several different Linux distributions, and abstracts this process as much as possible.

To this end, a special bootloader known as eliloader is present in the control domain which reads various

other_config keys in the VM record at start time and performs distribution-specific installation behaviour.

• install-repository: Required. Path to a repository; 'http', 'https', 'ftp', or 'nfs'. Should be specified

as would be used by the target installer, but not including prefixes, e.g. method=.

• install-vnc: Default: false. Use VNC where available during the installation.

• install-vncpasswd: Default: empty. The VNC password to use, when providng one is possible via

the command-line of the target distribution.

• install-round: Default: 1. The current bootloader round. Not to be edited by the user (see below)

5.2.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.1/4.4

eliloader is used for two rounds of booting. In the first round, it returns the installer initrd and kernel

from /opt/xensource/packages/files/guest-installer. Then, on the second boot, it removes

the additional updates disk from the VM, switches the bootloader to pygrub, and then begins a normal boot.

This sequence is required since Red Hat does not provide a Xen kernel for these distributions, and so the

XenServer custom kernels for those distributions are used instead.

5.2.2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5/5.0

Similar to the RHEL4.4 installation, except that the kernel and ramdisk are downloaded directly form the

network repository that was specified by the user, and switch the bootloader to pygrub immediately. Note

that pygrub is not executed immediately, and so will only be parsed on the next boot.