use xvda instead of sda on xen 4.0

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#1 Mon, 09/26/2011 - 15:22
tamias

use xvda instead of sda on xen 4.0

New XEN 4.0 xen-tools recommends to use xvda instead sda for block devices like disks.

How about implementation configure parameter in "Xen Host Settings"?

Thanks for good software. :)

Mon, 09/26/2011 - 15:52
JamieCameron

Do they recommend using xvda in the Xen .cfg file, or in the /etc/fstab file on the VM?

Cloudmin currently uses xvda in /etc/fstab if the kernel supports it.

''

Sat, 10/08/2011 - 05:24 (Reply to #2)
tamias

Here block of /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf

# If you're using the lenny or later version of the Xen guest kernel you will
# need to make sure that you use 'hvc0' for the guest serial device,
# and 'xvdX' instead of 'sdX' for serial devices.
#
# You may specify the things to use here:
#
# serial_device = hvc0 #default
# serial_device = tty1
#
# disk_device = xvda #default
# disk_device = sda
#

I use Debian 6 as host system and try to create debian 5 and 6 based VMs by using PyGrub. all VMs creates with /dev/sda partitions.

Sat, 10/08/2011 - 11:57 (Reply to #3)
JamieCameron

Cloudmin 5.8 and later should solve this issue, as VM images that support xvda devices use /dev/xvda1 in their /etc/fstab file. This will be preserved when the VM is created..

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Mon, 10/10/2011 - 03:17 (Reply to #4)
tamias

Sounds good but in practice i always have sda based partitions by default even if VM configured use xvda in fstab. May be this inconvience present only in GPL version that i have in use? I use latest version of cloudmin.

It's not very big problem for me. I can always rename partitions for VM's. But this is not right way. :o)

Mon, 10/10/2011 - 10:34 (Reply to #5)
JamieCameron

So do you mean your xen config file uses sda device names, or do they appear somewhere else in your vm?

''

Thu, 10/13/2011 - 09:50 (Reply to #6)
draga

I can confirm the issue: the xen config file always creates "sda" entries, even if the fstab shows xvda. More, it would be nice to have the possibility to set options like "extra='elevator=noop'" on specific images' configs.

Thu, 10/13/2011 - 15:57 (Reply to #7)
JamieCameron

Does the user of sda instead of xvda in the Xen config cause problems though?

''

Fri, 10/14/2011 - 06:46
draga

It does, actually, as the machine doesn't boot: the xen config file sets also the "root=/dev/sdaX" option so the machine boots up, searches for sdaX, doesn't find it and panics. If I change manually to "xvdaX", it is able to boot perfectly.

Fri, 10/14/2011 - 17:12 (Reply to #9)
JamieCameron

Thanks - I forgot about that case, as most users boot their VMs using pygrub, in which case the root line isn't needed. I will fix this in the next Cloudmin release.

''

Fri, 10/14/2011 - 17:53 (Reply to #10)
draga

Thank you very much. I would love to deploy a Cloudmin install on a Debian Squeeze dom0, and I'm trying to find out all the possible problems. Cloudmin (as all the *min projects) is a great piece of software. Thank you for that.

Fri, 10/21/2011 - 15:32 (Reply to #11)
tamias

Sounds good. Thanks for great software.

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