Installation guide
Note
These packages do not support booting from a para-virtualized disk. Booting the guest
operating system kernel still requires the use of the emulated IDE driver, while any other (non-
system) user-space applications and data can use the para-virtualized block device drivers.
The procedure below covers the steps to enable the para-virtualized drivers for a Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5 guest.
Pro ced u re 12.1. En able p ara- virt u aliz ed d rivers f or a Red H at En t erp rise Lin u x G u est
1. Shutdown the virtual machine (use “ #shutdown -h now” inside the guest).
2. Edit the guest configuration file in /etc/xen/<Your GuestsName> in the following ways:
a. Remove the “ type=ioemu” entry from the “ vif=” entry.
b. Add any additional disk partitions, volumes or LUNs to the guest so that they can be
accessed via the para-virtualized (xen-vbd) disk driver.
c. For each additional physical device, LUN, partition or volume add an entry similar to
the one shown below to the “ disk=” section in the guest configuration file. The
original “ disk=” entry might also look like the entry below.
disk = [ "file:/var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel4_64_fv.dsk,hda,w"]
d. Once you have added additional physical devices, LUNs, partitions or volumes; the
para-virtualized driver entry in your XML configuration file should resemble the entry
shown below.
disk = [ "file:/var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel3_64_fv.dsk,hda,w",
"tap:aio:/var/lib/libvirt/images/UserStorage.dsk,xvda,w" ]
Note
Use “ tap:aio” for the para-virtualized device if a file-based image is used.
3. Boot the virtual machine using the virsh command:
# virsh start YourGuestName
To verify the network interface has come up after installing the para-virtualized drivers issue the
following command on the guest. It should display the interface information including an assigned IP
address
[root@rhel5]# ifconfig eth0
Now, verify the partitions which you have created are available.
[root@rhel5]# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
3 0 10485760 hda
Chapt er 1 2 . Xen Para- virt ualiz ed Drivers
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