5 Installing The Binary Package

Run the following commands:

apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base lpr nfs-common portmap pidentd pcmcia-cs pppoe pppoeconf ppp pppconfig
apt-get install screen ssh debootstrap python python2.3-twisted iproute bridge-utils libcurl3-dev

5.1 Install Xen

Then download xen-3.0.3_0-install-x86_32.tgz from http://www.xensource.com/xen/downloads/dl_303tarballs.html, unpack it, and run the install script:

cd /usr/src
wget http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.0.3-0/bin.tgz/xen-3.0.3_0-install-x86_32.tgz
tar xvzf xen-3.0.3_0-install-x86_32.tgz
cd dist/
./install.sh
mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled

Now Xen is installed. In order to start the Xen services at boot time, do the following:

update-rc.d xend defaults 20 21
update-rc.d xendomains defaults 21 20

We need a ramdisk for our new Xen kernel, therefore we do the following:

depmod 2.6.16.29-xen

apt-get install libhtml-template-perl libparse-recdescent-perl

wget http://downloads.howtoforge.com/files/yaird_0.0.12-8bpo1_i386.deb
dpkg -i yaird_0.0.12-8bpo1_i386.deb

(The original yaird package was located in http://backports.org/debian/pool/main/y/yaird/, but was removed in the meantime, so I've made the package available under http://downloads.howtoforge.com/files/yaird_0.0.12-8bpo1_i386.deb.)

mkinitrd.yaird -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.16.29-xen 2.6.16.29-xen

The last command creates the ramdisk /boot/initrd.img-2.6.16.29-xen.

Next we add our new kernel to Grub, our bootloader. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, and before the line ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST add the following stanza:

vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

[...]
	  
title Xen 3.0.3 / XenLinux 2.6
root (hd0,0)
kernel /xen.gz  dom0_mem=64000
module /vmlinuz-2.6-xen root=/dev/hda6 ro max_loop=255
module /initrd.img-2.6.16.29-xen

[...]

Make sure that /dev/hda6 is your / partition. Keep in mind what I said about Grub and partitioning in chapter 1! I added max_loop=255 to the module line to make sure that enough loop devices are available because or virtual machines will be mounted as loop devices.

Now reboot the system:

shutdown -r now

At the boot prompt, Grub should now list Xen 3.0.3 / XenLinux 2.6 as the first kernel and boot it automatically. If your system comes up without problems, then everything is fine!