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Install and Run Xen on Fedora 8

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— 2 min read

As the Xen.org community manager, I felt it was worth my time to install Xen on a machine to learn more about how it works and what it takes to install. I am sharing my experience with the community, especially for people looking at Xen for the first time. Note, I am not an amateur Linux/UNIX user but haven’t played with it much in a few years so I consider myself rusty.
Selection of Operating System – I decided to load Xen on a Fedora 8 machine by looking over the Xen.org Wiki (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HowTos) and found a link to a nice document about loading Xen on Fedora 8 from the Fedora Wiki (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Fedora8VirtQuickStart ).
Installation Steps – I did find some problems when going through the steps on the Fedora 8 installation document so here are the steps I followed which have additional items not clearly stated in the document:

  1. Install Virtualization Software: su -c “yum groupinstall ‘Virtualization'”
  2. ADDED STEP: su -c “yum install xen kernel-xen”
  3. Check System – Administration – Services for xend
  4. Check /boot/grub/grub.conf to ensure you have a xen boot option (my conf file has this option)
    title Fedora (2.6.21.7-3.fc8xen)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel/xen.gz-2.6.21.7-3.fc8
    module/vmlinuz-2.6.21.7-3.fc8xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhbg quiet
    module/initrd-2.6.21.7-3.fc8xen.img
  5. Reboot the machine and select proper Xen kernel: I selected Fedora(2.6.21.7-3.fc8xen)
  6. su -c “virt-manager”
  7. Open a connection for “Xen” with “local”
  8. Click on NEW Button
  9. Enter System Name
  10. Select Paravirtualized or Fully Virtualized Method
  11. Locate Installation Meda ; I used http://mirror.stanford.edu/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os
  12. Storage Space – I used Simple File
  13. Connect to Host Network
  14. Allocate Memory and CPU
  15. Load Virtual Machine

Finally, I get a Virtual Machine Console to launch and it goes through the process of installing Fedora 8; I was not able to complete the install as I ran out of memory trying to install a 2nd full Fedora system on my box – I don’t have much memory on my system. I will be trying to load a tiny Linux OS version in the future; however, following the steps above will give you a Xen enabled Fedora 8 system capable of running Dom0 and a DomU.
NOTE – I was able to get CentOS 5.1 to load with no memory issues using the following http address – http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/i386/ 

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