Switching from IDE to virtio_blk [qas Re: [Fedora-xen] Goodbye Xen on RH/Fedora?]

Mark McLoughlin markmc at redhat.com
Thu Jan 22 10:39:08 UTC 2009


On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 14:45 +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 03:06:43PM +0100, Emre Erenoglu wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > (This is all getting offtopic for fedora-xen, we should really move to
> > > fedora-virt)
> > >
> > > On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 14:28 +0100, Jan ONDREJ (SAL) wrote:
> > > >  virtio_net works well, but I have trouble to boot from virtio_blk.
> > > >
> > > > I can add second disk as virto block device, but I can't boot from
> > > > first disk.
> > >
> > > When switching from IDE to virtio, you need to first build a new initrd
> > > in the guest with e.g.:
> > >
> > >  $> mkinitrd --with virtio_pci --with virtio_blk -f
> > > /boot/initrd-$(kernelversion) $(kernelversion)
> > >
> > > You only need to do this once. After that, if a new kernel is installed
> > > while you're booted off a virtio disk, then mkinitrd will include the
> > > modules automatically.
> > 
> > 
> > You will also need to specify /dev/vdX on the kernel  root= line and make
> > sure your init script inside your initrd triggers the virtio drivers at boot
> > so that the /dev/vdX are created.
> 
> Yes I have to agree with Emre here - I don't think it's as simple as
> just rebuilding mkinitrd.  I got that far but gave up later on.
> 
> /me checks notes ...
> 
> Yup, I got as far as working out that you would have to edit fstab and
> possibly /boot/grub/device.map and /boot/grub/menu.lst, before giving
> up.

Could this have been an x86_64 Fedora 9 xen guest? If so, you probably
hit a nasty special case - the F9 x86_64 xen kernel didn't have support
for running 32 bit binaries like grub, so the bootloader would never
have been installed into the MBR. That works fine for pygrub, but not
with KVM's real BIOS.

> If anyone would like to fill in the wiki page here on the subject:
> 
>   http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio

Okay, added some bits.

Cheers,
Mark.




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