Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Upgrading xen server from Etch to Wheezy

One of the issues with Xen, which has since been addressed by PyGRUB, is that the kernel used by a VM is controlled by the dom0, not by the vm. So, like me, you can cheerfully dist-upgrade within a vm, to no effect.

Ideally we want to got from Etch to Lenny to Squeeze.

http://www.debian.org/releases/squeeze/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#xen-upgrades

As a half way house lets try to get an unused vm to work with a squeeze kernel.

I have an unused vm! Update /etc/apt/sources.list to use squeeze. Oh, the debian keyring has changed:


apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

Now try to get a copy of the kernel image we need, as per above release notes.


apt-get install xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-amd64

Fat chance, as the vm is running an old kernel.

On the vm install xen-linux-system-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64, then copy to dom0


cd /boot
scp root@dom.context-computing.co.uk:/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 .
scp root@dom.context-computing.co.uk:/boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 .
xm shutdown dom.context-computing.co.uk
cd /etc/xen
mv dom.context-computing.co.uk.cfg dom.context-computing.co.uk.cfg-18
mv dom.context-computing.co.uk.cfg-26 dom.context-computing.co.uk.cfg
xm create dom.context-computing.co.uk.cfg

Whilst the config works (no Error 22), ie we have a xen enabled kernel, the machine crashes, and does so early: no output on console.

Revert to a lenny system running an etch kernel.

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