[Fedora-xen] Removing PAE support in kernel-xen

[Johan De Wit]

Hi,

Seems I,m a litle bit closer now.
I can now start the installation process using virt-manager.

I tried to update the installation kernel-xen RPMS in the installation
tree wuith the nopae version.  Installation then hangs on the preparing
installation - could take some tiem" screen.  (left it running
overnight.)  The quest consules cpu, and netstat reviels a lot of http
traffic.  

Before i did the update, installation did work, except after the reboot,
the PAE kernel is installed with the obvious result that the guest
aborts.

Did this on both CentOS5.0 and FC7

Suspecting i did something wrong updatuing the installation tree.
(- Replacing the RPMS
 - Ran createrepo
 --> seems soemthing else needs to be done also. Need to google for it)
)

removing the PAE support in the <documetnroot>/<distro>images/xen :

cp /boot/vmlnuz-nopae  /images/xen/vmlinuz

Modify the initrd modules:

mkdir /tmp/image
cd /tmp/image
gzip -cd <documentroot>/<distro>/i386/images/xen/initrd.img | cpio -imd
--quiet
cd modules
mkdir modimage
cd modimage
gzip -cd ../modules.cgz | cpio -imd --quiet
!! we have the pae enabled kernel modules here.

mkdir 'uname -r' (eg 2.6.20-2925.9.nopae.fc7xen)
cd 'uname -r'
mkdir i686
cd i686
for i in ../../2.6.20-2925.9.fc7xen/i686/*; do
find /lib/modules/2.6.20-2925.9.nopae.fc7xen -name `basename $i` -exec
cp {} . \; ; done

Copy the pae disabled kernelmodules !

cd ../..
rm pae anabled kernelmodules

find . |cpio --quiet -c -o | gzip -9 -n > ../modules.cgz
cd ..
rm -rf modimages
find . |cpio --quiet -c -o | gzip -9 -n >
<documentroot>/<distro>/i386/images/xen/initrd.img

cleanup


Sorry for the mess. I will put it in some proper text later on.

Wish me luck

Johan

On Fri, 2007-06-15 at 21:40 +0200, Karl J South wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 6/15/07, Johan De Wit <johan.dewit at external.thalesaleniaspace.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I want to use xen and the virtualisation tools provided in FC7.  This
> > will be running on my laptop, which has no PAE support, since the max
> > ram = 2GB.
> 
> I'm in the same situation and just wanted to wish you good luck with
> this project and kindly ask you to make the necessary changes
> available in one way or another to everyone else that is in the same
> situation.
> 
> > I already rebuilded the kerne-xen package, and removed pae support.
> >
> > kernel-xen.spec line 94
> >
> > %ifarch i686
> > %define buildpae 0
> > %define builddebug 0
> > # we build always xen HV with pae
> > %define xen_flags verbose=y crash_debug=y    <--- change this line,
> > remove the pae bit
> > %endif
> >
> > And in SOURCES/kernel-2.6.20-i686-xen.config at the end
> >
> > # CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set
> > CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
> >
> > But when installing an new xen guest with virt-manager, this doesn't
> > work.  I've setup a local repo, and now i'm looking to get rid of the
> > pae stuff that is builtin the <pathtorepo>/images/xen/[vmlinuz|
> > initrd.img]
> >
> > Overwriting the vmlinuz with the kernel I rebuild with the above steps
> > doesnt't work well.
> >
> > Searching the web didn't get me to a solution.
> >
> > Could someone please direct me to a solution ?  I've looked into
> > anaconda, revision etc, but still cannot figure out how to fix my
> > problem.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Johan
> 
> /kjs