[Pkg-xen-devel] Trying to upgrade domU to squeeze

[Ian Campbell]

On Sun, 2010-12-05 at 19:58 +0100, Paul van der Vlis wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Not sure this is the right place to ask Xen user-questions.
> 
> I am running Lenny and try to upgrade a domU to Squeeze.
> 
> After the installation of a new xen-kernel in the domU and upgrading
> udev I did a reboot but then the kernel does not find the root anymore,
> and it's dropping me to a shell. When I look into /dev/ I don't see any
> disks or partions.

Which kernel flavour were you running under Lenny -686-bigmem or
-xen-686?

Similarly do you know which one you got upgraded to with Squeeze?

I think what has happened is that a) the driver name changed from the
Lenny -xen-686 flavour due to change from classic-Xen kernel patches to
pvops and/or b) the configuration changed from builtin to module between
Lenny and Squeeze.

Anyway, it seems likely that your ramdisk has ended up without the disk
driver. If you are able to boot using a fallback kernel or mount the
root filesystem with a combination of loopback and/or kpartx then you
should be able to regenerate an initrd containing the xen-blkfront.ko
driver by adding it explicitly to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules.

> Another question:
> Is it better to use a xen-kernel for a domU, or can I use a normal one?

My recommendation would be to use the normal flavours (-686-bigmem or
-and64) in domU if you can and only use the Xen flavours (-xen-686 or
-xen-amd64) if you find there are features missing in the normal images.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Campbell

One Bell System - it used to work before they installed the Dimension!