In Re: [Xen-devel] Network issues with SuSE firewall, On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 03:13:57AM +0000, Ian Pratt wrote:

... lots of helpful stuff omitted ...

Thanks, Ian. I'm grateful that running off of CD now works. I'm ready to move towards a workable/usable system, and will describe the outcome I'm thinking of. From what I've read in README.CD, this is clearly possible but there are questions left unanswered.

Questions:

1) For IP addresses, do they need to be sequential? I have 9 sequential ones, but the first (DOM0) is not. I can renumber if needed, but it looks like Xen just have separate startup scripts with hard-coded IP addresses for each non-DOM0 domain.

2) Can my current /usr (and the rest of the distro) co-exist with Xen, or will I be unable to boot a "regular" Linux after all this?

Setup:

- I want to run 9+1 domains on one system (9 virtual plus the 0th domain). They'll be IP-based.

- I'd like them to share as much of the core OS as is reasonable: /, /boot, /etc, /usr, /usr/local etc. This can be by NFS, or (better) mounting ro. This is for convenience in administration.

- They must have one or more shared data directories (/globus and /shared), again via NFS or ro. (r+w is not needed). This is for getting applications running.

- They'll each have their own /data partition, r+w, which will be a physically separate drive. /dev/sdk1, /dev/sdl1, /dev/sdm1, etc.

- I'm not sure how to handle /home. It would be nice for a user to get his *same* home directory r+w on each system. NFS r+w?

So, things I need to do are:

1) Get a correct /usr etc. on hard drive, so I can boot virtual domains that will run off of hard drive. (Currently, they're running in RAMfs via CD.)

2) Give each virtual domain a different /etc/fstab or other configuration so that they mount the right drives ro and rw and NFS.

3) Code a xenctl startup script for each IP-based domain to insure each one is booted properly. For example, "grid-11" should always go to the same IP address, not a different one if, for example, one of the other domains fails to start or is accidentally started twice.

For illustration purposes, grid-11.arsc.edu = 137.229.71.11. The main system, peabody.arsc.edu = 137.229.71.6

As you see, the main parts I don't quite see yet are the interaction between the system filesystems (/usr etc.), and the mechanics of startup for a hard-drive based system.

I promise to write up all these steps, for others to use, once I get things running. Thanks again for your help, this is truly going to be extremely useful software for my Grid applications development. -- Greg

------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: ApacheCon 2003, 16-19 November in Las Vegas. Learn firsthand the latest developments in Apache, PHP, Perl, XML, Java, MySQL, WebDAV, and more! http://www.apachecon.com/