XenServer Virtual Machine Installation 4.1.0

Updating VMs

5.3. Updating Linux kernels and guest utilities

The Linux guest utilities can be updated by re-running the Linux/install.sh script from the built-in xs-

tools.iso CD image (see Section 4.5, “Installing the Linux guest agent”). From time to time, Citrix also

supplies updated Linux kernels for supported distributions. Supported distributions are:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x

• CentOS 5.x

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x

• CentOS 4.x

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.x

• Debian Sarge and Etch

The updates are posted online at: http://updates.xensource.com/XenServer/4.1.0/.

For example, the RHEL 3.x kernel would be at: http://updates.xensource.com/XenServer/4.1.0/rhel3x/.

This is of particular importance for RHEL 4.5/4.6 and CentOS 4.5/4.6, where you will get the upstream kernel

by default, which has certain limitations (see Section 4.9, “Release Notes”).

For yum-enabled distributions (CentOS 4 and 5, RHEL 5), xe-guest-utilities installs a yum config-

uration file to enable subsequent updates to be done via yum in the standard manner. Note that RHEL 4

in particular does not use yum.

For Debian, /etc/apt/sources.list is populated to enable updates via apt by default.