[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#702369: Bug#702369: can't install wheezy from template

[Daniel Pocock]

On 06/03/13 04:50, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 03/06/2013 03:10 AM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>   
>> Also, the ALT key doesn't work with the vnc viewer, so I can't easily
>> switch virtual consoles, and the VNC viewer is extremely slow, it would
>> be much better to use a `xm console' style text interface for the installer.
>>     
> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure how to reply to the other things you wrote, but for the
> above, why don't you use "xe console"? It works pretty well for the
> Debian installer. I never used VNC for installing a Debian, as it's too
> slow, as you said.
>   

A lot of the wiki pages say that there is no console and that VNC has to
be used, e.g.

  http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Cloud_Platform:_Access_to_VM_console

suggests that it is necessary to make some hack to access the console
using the xl console tool.  So I simply didn't realise that xe console
exists - I've just tried it now and I can confirm it is working.

I found that I can press F8 to get a virtual ALT key in VNC, and using
another vnc client (xvnc4viewer) was faster.

In the end, I managed to do a successful install from ISO image as HVM
rather than PV.

I then tried to convert from HVM to PV by doing this:

xe vm-param-set HVM-boot-policy="" uuid=MY_UUID
xe vm-param-set PV-bootloader="pygrub" uuid=MY_UUID

The domU boots as a PV, but the login prompt is never displayed.  I can
view the console boot messages with VNC, but no login prompt appears in
the console.  The machine is otherwise working fine and can't be
accessed with an ssh login.  I think this has something to do with
inittab and the terminal device names changing.

I subsequently found that the original error from Debian installer,
invalid network mirror, was really due to a DNS networking issue in the
new environment.  However, the DI error message was so vague that I had
no idea what was wrong, so it is probably a DI bug rather than an XCP
bug.  I'm going to try another wheezy/PV/console install later today or
tomorrow.

Some new problems discovered during the HVM install:

- the README.Debian doesn't give the right info about installing from an
ISO, I'll provide a separate bug report with a suggested fix

- creating a second vif for the HVM instance made it unbootable, with
some vague error from qemu-dm.  I'll also open a separate bug report
about that, because I've seen it with a Windows HVM too.