[Fedora-xen] Installing FC9 guest on Centos 5 fails installing OO writer2latex

[Tom Horsley]

On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:42:40 -0700
Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer at desc.org> wrote:

> I've tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest on a 
> Centos 5 host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, 
> and then hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.

I had enormous problems with lots of installs using an older Xen
and file: devices for virtual disks. I would constantly see the sort
of stuff you describe with the VM going funny in the head during
heavy I/O (like installing openoffice - that was a favorite place for
it to die).

I switched the host machine to debian etch, and built what was
at the time the latest mercurial version of 3.2.1 from source, booting
the host with the dom0 kernel built during the Xen build from
scratch.

I then switched all my virtual disks to tap:aio: instead of file:
and since those changes, everything has been working great. No
install problems, no mysterious VM crashes when cron kicks off
makewhatis, etc.