The Perfect Xen 3.0 Setup For Debian - Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up.

Firstly thanks for all the great tutorials, the site is a proper goldmine!

I am having a problem installing Xen on a Sun X2100 after successfully installing it on various Pentium 4 machines.

When restarting and attempting to boot Xen I get the following:

Code:

Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up.
VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy.
VFS: Insert root floppy and press ENTER

I have no floppy so I hit ENTER and in restarts.

It has been suggested that this may be to do with the added stansa in the grub menu.lst .

I added the following before ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST:

Code:

title        Xen 3.0.1 / XenLinux 2.6.12-xen0
root        (hd0,0)
kernel        /xen.gz dom0_mem=65536
module        /vmlinuz-2.6-xen0 root=/dev/sda6 ro console=tty0

Compared to the original:

Code:

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8-2-386
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-386 root=/dev/sda6 ro
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.8-2-386
savedefault
boot

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Many thanks,

Finn.

 

I've had problems with NFS on domU, that's why I uninstall it in the tutorial:

Code:

apt-get remove nfs-common

It seems as if you're having the same problems in dom0 now. If you don't need NFS on dom0, uninstall it.

 

Hi Falko,
thanks for your reply. I don't actually make it far enough in the tutorial to remove nfs-common from dom0. The first time I try to boot into dom0 (at the bottom of p3 of the tutorial) I get the errors.
Any other thoughts?
Cheers,
Finn.

 

Did you run this command (it at the start of page 3)?

Code:

apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base lpr nfs-common portmap pidentd pcmcia-cs pppoe pppoeconf ppp pppconfig

 

Hi Falko,

thanks for your replies.

I don't get as far as page 3.

At the bottom of page 2 I get to:

Code:

Now reboot the system:

shutdown -r now

At the boot prompt, Grub should now list Xen 3.0 / XenLinux 2.6.12 as the first kernel and boot it automatically. If your system comes up without problems, then everything is fine!

But the system doesn't come up ok. During the boot up into dom0 it has the NFS error.

I tried removing nfs-common in the root install, but it wasn't installed.

I did find somone with a similar problem at :
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2005-07/msg00688.html

Which made me think something might be wrong in the grub config.

Thanks for your help.

Finn.

 

What's the output of

Code:

apt-get remove nfs-common

?

 

Booted into the root Debian, not Xen dom0 (as I can't get in).

Code:

server1:~# apt-get remove nfs-common
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package nfs-common is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.

 

Then there shouldn't be any more NFS errors in dom0.

 

Hi Falko,
Upon attempting to boot into xen0 it still gets to the same bit and stops, saying:

Code:

Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up.
VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NSF, trying floppy.
VFS: Isnert root floppy and press ENTER

I think I'll try one more time to install from scratch, then give up.
Thanks,
Finn.

 

Just had a thought: I'm running on an Opteron so should I be using the unofificial sarge-amd64 version of Debian on my basic install? Would this effect the Xen compile from source? It is currently on the i386 3.1r2 but I have found an article here which does it in a different way, but mentions using the right kernel for Opteron machines.

 

Normally that shouldn't make a difference (the AMD 64bit processors can also run 32bit operating systems).

Where exactly do you have the NFS problems? In dom0 (the host system) or in domU (the virtual machines)?

 

Hi Falko,

thank you for your replies.

Well, I can't boot into Xen at all.
It is the very first time attempting to boot into Xen, before setting up any domUs. Right at the bottom of page 3 of the tutorial, where we shutdown for reboot.
http://howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_xen3_debian_p3


As I said I have used the tutorial to install Xen on other PCs with no problems, so it seems to be a problem specific to this machine. (Sunfire X2100, Opteron singe core, 80GB SATA, 2GB RAM)

I read on the Xen Users list that it tries in desperation to boot from NFS if the proper root fails, hence I wondered if it was an issue with the 64 vs 32 bit processor. I'm pretty sure the grub is pointing it to the right place.

So any other thoughts?

 

Then it seems to be a hardware problem. You can try to play around with the dom0 kernel (i.e., compile it again and include more drivers).

 

< > NFS server support │ │
│ │ [ ] Root file system on NFS

You have thoese options in kernel, so ...

bye