RHEL 5 and Xen compatibility

Hello..I am not very proficient in Linux kernel stuffs although I know my basics. I have a question and all suggestions/solutions will be highly appreciated...

I got to know that RHEL 5 has inbuilt Xen Support...So I tried to install a RHEL 5.0 Server on my P4 machine. On top of it I tried to install Xen specific RPMs and some other RPMs needed by Xen.

The additinal RPMs added after base RHEL 5.0 installation are :


bridge-utils-1.1.2.i386.rpm
iproute-2.6.18-4.el5.i386.rpm
kernel-xen-2.6.18-8.el5.i686.rpm
kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-8.el5.i686.prm
udev-095-14.5.el5.i386.rpm


After all this the grub.conf gets modified automatically and looks like this:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-8.el5xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-8.el5
module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
module /initrd-2.6.18-8.el5xen.img

title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-8.el5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-8.el5.img



After all this I am ready to boot properly into Xen Specific Linux and the original RHEL . But there is no /etc/xen directory and nor ar e the tools like xend and xm available.

So am I missing some other RPMS that need to be installed??

Thanks
Dushmanta

 

Take a look at this tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/centos_5.0_xen
It should work for RHEL 5, too.

 

How does one install xen ? I tried to use yum and it didn`t retrieve the xen kernel.

 

Did you get any errors when you ran

Code:

yum install kernel-xen xen

?

 

None whatsoever. I simply followed the tutorial that you wrote. When I checked to see if the new kernel was listed in /boot, it wasn`t.

 

Any other suggestions ? Getting the kernel manually ? I have 2.6.18-8.el5 kernel. Should I get a newer one with xen ?

 

Found the latest kernel in RPM, so it`s ready to go. Checking some how-tos.

 

Install Xen on CentOS 5.0

To reproduce instructions from http://www.howtoforge.com/centos_5.0_xen
I should have internet connection running on CentOS 5.0 server.
As far as I understand manual requires remote repositories on the internet.
My question is :-
Would it be possible to download necessary Xen stuff somewhere else and
copy to the box ? (as it happens with VMware Server)

 

You could download the packages directly from a CentOS repository and install them with

Code:

rpm -ivh [I]package_name[/I]

But then again, you'd need an internet connection.