[Fedora-xen] Current FC5 kernel-xen rpm broken?

[Chris Lalancette]

master at bradleyland.com wrote:
> I've just migrated a system from FC4/Xen 3.0 (old) to FC5 with xen 3.0.2.
> The OS update went without issue.
> 
> Unfortunately, neither the kernel-xen or kernel-xen0 packages work for me;
> they fail in two different ways:
> 
> 1. kernel-xen appears to be built as PAE (not that it matters I suppose),
> and does not bring up any vethx/vif interfaces. When attempting to run the
> "network-bridge" script manually, it errors out saying "veth0 doesn't
> exist", etc. I haven't figured out the magic required for this to work.

Yes, that is correct, kernel-xen is built with PAE, and in FC6, it will also be built with PAE.  As you say, it shouldn't make a difference, anyway.  When the network-bridge script fails, are there any useful messages on the console?  In /var/log/xend.log or /var/log/xend-debug.log?  What version of the xen rpm do you have (rpm -q xen)?

> 
> 2. kernel-xen0 does start up the virtual interfaces successfully.
> Unfortunately, the dom0 machine crashes with a stack dump when using most
> any networking. I can make it fail just be connecting to the samba server
> on the box and clicking on few directories. Otherwise, if I ssh into the
> machine it takes a bit longer, but still crashes. If I work from the
> console, it stays up indefinitely (10 hours or more).

Can you include a stack trace next time it crashes?  Without at least that minimal information, we can't really track it down.  What version of the kernel is it (rpm -q kernel-xen0 and rpm -q kernel-xen).

> 
> I'd appreciate some guidance on using xen with FC5. I had hoped the
> released packages would be stable and usable. The machine (when running
> FC4) was as stable as a rock (up for 205 days) before I started the
> migration process, so I don't think I have a hardware problem.
> 
> The only change I made on the box was to enable "PnP OS?" and turn on
> ACPI. These settings had been disabled when it was running FC4.

Out of morbid curiosity, what happens if you put those two settings back to the way you had them for your FC4 install?  Not that I really think it is going to make a difference, but it would be worthwhile to recreate your exact (stable) hardware environment.

> 
> Is my best bet to compile from source and forget about the rpms? The FC5
> kernel is 2.6.17. I need to grow a raid 5 device and it's my understanding
> I need .17 in order for this to be supported.
> 
> The machine only has 1Gb of ram so I don't need PAE in any case.

The RPMS should work; compiling from source (if you mean our SRPMS) isn't going to really buy you much.  The latest upstream kernel that Xensource supports is 2.6.16, so you won't be able to get the 2.6.17 functionality going that route anyway.

> 
> 
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Chris Lalancette