Xen-c6 Fails To Boot

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It works fine for me .. you might consider using CentOS-6.6 and not CentOS-6.4 .. also, we now use a 3.10 kernel and the latest version of xen is 4.2.5 in the /6.6/xen4/ repo.

Use this link:
http://wiki.CentOS.org/HowTos/Xen/Xen4QuickStart

BUT .. it seems to be a hardware/driver issue.

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

7 thoughts on - Xen-c6 Fails To Boot

  • Updated to CentOS-6.6, but I still get the same issue.

    By the above I assume you’re using the xen4 repo rather than the xen-c6 repository referred to by http://wiki.CentOS.org/QaWiki/Xen4?
    Is the xen-c6 repo now considered broken or deprecated with the xen4 repo used in preference?

    The same hardware (cluster of 10 machines) was successfully working with the xen-c6 repository previously; I’m not sure what issue might have occurred to cause this failure on all hosts which is why I think it’s a software issue. Possibly a driver issue although the last successful run was using the same kernel so I assume had roughly the same drivers installed. Note that the 3.4 kernel boots fine without Xen, it is only under Xen that the boot fails and the machine restarts.

    Bob

  • Yes, the top of that page says:

    “This is a development release, only meant for testing purposes. We do not recommend anyone deploy production systems using the content mentioned here. “

    The wiki page Johnny pointed you to is the officially supported Xen 4
    CentOS binary now.

    We should probably delete that wiki page — thanks for finding it. :-)

    -George

  • What I mean by hardware issue is the way the hardware interacts with the newer versions of xen. I guess what I should have said is that there is some unique issue with your hardware.

    The updates have have posted are needed for numerous security updates, so I would not recommend running older versions long term for security reasons … BUT … all the previously released software is here:

    http://vault.CentOS.org/6.4/xen4/

    http://vault.CentOS.org/6.5/xen4/

    and

    http://mirror.CentOS.org/CentOS/6.6/xen4/

    In this unique case (ie, your exact hardware and software combinations), you may need to experiment with and find the exact combination of software that works for you.

    In any event, all the software we have previously released is in those locations, so getting a combination that works so we can isolate the issue that causes it all to die is likely the best starting point.

  • Thanks all for the advice.

    It seems there is an issue with Dracut booting from these hosts when LVM is used.

    dracut: Scanning devices sda2 for LVM logical volumes VolGroup/lv_swap VolGroup/lv_root dracut: inactive ‘/dev/VolGroup/lv_swap’ [1.94 GiB] inherit dracut: inactive ‘/dev/VolGroup/lv_root’ [230.69 GiB] inherit dracut: PARTIAL MODE. Incomplete logical volumes will be processed. dracut: Operation prohibited while global/metadata_read_only is set. dracut: Operation prohibited while global/metadata_read_only is set.
    … dracut Warning: LVM VolGroup/lv_swap not found dracut Warning: LVM VolGroup/lv_root not found

    Switching my kickstart to use real partitions rather than LVM solved the issue. Not sure if that’s enough detail to figure out what’s wrong / missing from the kernel / initrd.

    Bob

  • Sorry, it’s still not clear from the previous conversation — in addition to updating to CentOS 6.6, have you also switched to the official Xen4CentOS repos (i.e., by installing CentOS-release-xen)?

    -George