Alon Swartz's picture
Alon Swartz - Thu, 2012/02/02 - 15:18

In our quest to make TurnKey easy to deploy on as many public and private clouds, we recently released optimized builds for OpenStack and OpenVZ.

Testing the builds prior to release was relatively easy using nested virtualization, but Xen is a little more complicated.

So, if you have access to a Xen powered infrastructure it would be great if you could lend a hand in testing TurnKey Core (download, signature), and provide feedback. If you don't have access but know someone who does, please pass on this request.

The default root password is 'turnkey'.

Thanks folks!

Forum: 
General
Tags: 
xen
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Thu, 2012/02/02 - 15:46

Xen too ey!?! Far out!  You've pretty much got everything covered now! The only virtualisation (that I can think of) that you don't support OOTB now is KVM! But I don't think there has ever been much request for that (although IIRC someone posted a script on how to convert a VMware image to KVM...)

Anyway, sorry I can't help out but if I hear of anyone in my travels I'll be sure to head them here.

Alon Swartz's picture

Alon Swartz - Thu, 2012/02/02 - 16:12

Any help with getting Xen tested so we can push it out the door would be awesome.

Regarding KVM, I'm not sure there is any need for yet another build type. I use KVM quiet a lot during testing, both iso and vmdk builds, and they work great.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Fri, 2012/02/03 - 01:45

So you can load the VMDK straight in to KVM then!? I didn't realise...

Eric (tssgery)'s picture

Eric (tssgery) - Thu, 2012/02/02 - 22:57

no need for anything special here... do fewer things and do them well is my motto.

 

Xen builds... too bad I reimaged my Zen server last week.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Fri, 2012/02/03 - 13:27

And I recall I tried booting a KVM machine from a vHDD image (I don't recall which one...) and it didn't run so I left it at that. Obviously I was doing something wrong...

Rajakumar's picture

Rajakumar - Mon, 2012/02/06 - 22:49

Downloaded the .tar.gz file for xen.  How do I import this into xen.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Tue, 2012/02/07 - 01:31

I haven't used Xen at all (when I first investigated opensource hypervisors I was seriously looking at Xen and almost ready to start installing when I came across Proxmox, which is just too easy IMO). I suspect that inside the tar.gz is a compressed filesystem of some sort. Perhaps have a peek inside and see what's inside?

Also please note that these are Xen images, not XenServer images (ie open source Xen as opposed to proprietry XenServer - see an old discussion re XenServer here if interested).

Alon Swartz's picture

Alon Swartz - Fri, 2012/02/10 - 11:10

@Rajakumar thanks for taking the time, and sorry for my late response, but @Jeremy's answer was spot on. With help from Gigatux we confirmed that the builds work, and just made an announcement.

Michael Mansour's picture

Michael Mansour - Wed, 2012/02/22 - 13:16

Hi,

I've spent a couple of nights trying to understand what to do with the XEN tar.bz2 files.

We run various XEN hosts (NOT XenServer) on various Redhat based (EL5) servers. Extracting the tar.bz2 produces the filesystem extract, but what exactly is meant to be done with that?

I've searched through this website and the net, and can't find any howto's or instructions covering this topic.

The reference here doesn't really say much that makes sense, and refers to DTC which seems to open a can of worms for installation when all that is needed is to load up the downloodable image as a XEN guest.

The reference here also isn't of much use (to me anyway), and the reference here just says "varies between Xen setups".

The "Help" areas on the Turnkey website also aren't helpful in informing people how to make use of the Xen downloadable images.

Understandably this may be because the releases are very new, but what is really needed is simple to follow instructions, howto's or faq's topics covering how to use Xen downloadable images from Turnkey.

Note I'm not a newbie, been working with Linux and UNIX environments for just over 20 years, I'm surprised I can't figure this out.

Because I stumbled on Turnkey the other night (looking for Tomcat appliances) and seeing the range of appliances available, I'm eager to use some under Xen and test quality, than going with the "easier" VMware option.

If anyone has advice, please advise or point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Paul Bieganski - Tue, 2012/06/05 - 08:46

Hi Michael,

Did you ever figure out how to easily run TKLBAM appliances on Xen (preferably using the XenCenter)? They DO appear to make this much more compliated and obfuscated then it should be... (unless there is some fundamental Xen-relaterd complexity preventing this from being sdimplified that I'm not getting...).

Thanks,

Paul

Michael Mansour's picture

Michael Mansour - Tue, 2012/06/05 - 09:44

Hi Paul. After originally leaving that email asking for help, I then set about checking out Proxmox, 2.0 at that time, now on 2.1.

I didn't try what Marc Warne had suggested in the point form setup he replied with, and honestly if it's too hard then I wouldn't want to use it in production.

I like Proxmox and am currently running three Proxmox servers, although none of them in production yet.

Proxmox includes all the Turnkey templates (and some of its own OpenVZ ones), as both projects have worked together to make it so.

I'm not sure I'll ever revisit Xen and Turnkey, but if I do I'll update this thread with what I find.

Marc Warne's picture

Marc Warne - Wed, 2012/06/13 - 14:57

Hi Michael,

The instructions I previously provided really were for a minimal install, i.e. with no control panel. If you were using another underlying virtualisation technology (e.g. OpenVZ or KVM) I'm sure the instructions would be just as hard.

GigaTux provides packaged Turnkey Linux images for DTC (one example control panel) based on the Xen images released here. I don't know of any for other control panels (e.g. SolusVM) but I can't imagine it's hard to make them. DTC isn't particularly easy to set up to be honest, but once it's running, it's easy to get going with the Xen images. SolusVM is (arguably) easier to set up but commercial.

Marc

Marc Warne's picture

Marc Warne - Thu, 2012/02/23 - 11:47

...but you do need to understand some of the fundamentals.

Clearly you know the basics (such as running a hypervisor and ensuring the dom0 is all working as expected).

You can use DTC but it might be overkill if you're just looking towards setting up a test Xen domU for Turnkey Linux (and not running hosting operation over multiple servers).

What I would do to get this running is:

  1. Set up LVM. It's a bit easier to get things working if you can point Xen in the direction of a 'real' device for the domU. The below will assume you are using LVM, but it will work if you want to create a disk image.
  2. Create a filesystem on the LVM partition (mkfs.ext3 /dev/lvm/volume).
  3. Mount the LVM partition somewhere (mount /dev/lvm/volume /mountpoint)
  4. Unpack the image into that mount point.
  5. To keep things simple, we'll run the same Linux version for the domU that the dom0 is using, so copy the modules into the mount point (cp -rx /lib/modules/`uname -r` /mountpoint/lib/modules)
  6. Unmount the mount point (umount /mountpoint).
  7. Set up a Xen configuration file in /etc/xen/xen99. Something like the following will do:

    kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32etcetc" # This should be the vmlinuz your dom0 uses
    ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32etcetc" # This should be the initrd your dom0 uses
    memory = 512
    name = "xen99"
    #cpu = -1   # leave to Xen to pick
    vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:01:00:01, ip=192.168.1.100' ]

    disk = [ 'phy:/dev/lvm/volume,xvda,w' ]

    root = "/dev/xvda ro"
    # Sets runlevel 4.
    extra = "4 TERM=xterm xencons=tty console=tty1"
     
  8. Run the domU and see the console (xm create -c xen99)

Hopefully magic will now happen. Let me know if something unexpected occurs - I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Marc
GigaTux

TomW's picture

TomW - Tue, 2012/08/28 - 21:30

I run a small cloud using Xen and XenServer.  This could be a great help to me.   I'll test it asap and report back here.


Tom2Slow's picture

Tom2Slow - Tue, 2012/09/04 - 00:53

Anyone got any help available to install these on a XCP platform?

 

--Tom

Krokodox's picture

Krokodox - Fri, 2012/11/30 - 02:21

First and foremost, on XCP 1.6 install "xenserver-transfer-vm-6.1.0-59002p.noarch.rpm" available on the Citrix XenServer 6.1 ISO in the "\packages.transfer-vm" directory:

# yum localinstall -y --nogpgcheck xenserver-transfer-vm-6.1.0-59002p.noarch.rpm

This will enable XenCenter in Windows to import a vmdk to XCP.

 

Then download the desired "VM" image, i.e. "turnkey-core-12.0-squeeze-x86-vmdk.zip" and unzip it. In XenCenter, select "File" then "Import" and follow the instructions to import this vmdk to a XenServer / XCP server. Once finished it will boot as expected and go through the usual TurnKey Linux configuration. Make sure that the VM's DVD drive has the "xs-tools.iso" selected!

 

Now comes the tricky part of converting this HVM VM to a PV VM.

  1. SSH into the VM's console
     
  2. Assign a Debian archive by creating a sources list:
    # nano /etc/apt/sources.list
     
  3. Add the following to the file, save it and exit when done (ctrl-x, y, enter):
    deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free
     
  4. Update the sources, upgrade Debian:
    # apt-get update
    # apt-get upgrade
     
  5. Download / install the Xen optimized kernel:
    # apt-get install linux-image-xen-686
     
  6. Mount the XenServer Tools .iso and install the tools:

    # mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
    # cd /mnt/Linux
    # ./install.sh
     
  7. Reboot the VM:
    # reboot

 

The VM should now boot up in PV mode. To check that this is the case, look at the boot options for the VM; PV mode only supports DVD or Hard Disk boot while HVM mode additionally supports network boot. In XenCenter right click on the VM, select "Properties" and then "Boot Options" to verify PV or HVM mode.
 
XCP 1.6 is highly recommended!
JamesG's picture

JamesG - Fri, 2012/12/28 - 01:11

Hey Krokodox,

I've followed your steps multiple times now and never get a PV VM.  XCP just never seems to pick up on the changes to the guest OS.  It's almost as if something needs to be changed on the XCP server to go along with the change on the DomU.

I can't imagine this is so hard.  :/

James

Alexander's picture

Alexander - Sun, 2013/10/20 - 20:03

Hello to all,

Has anyone been able to install the xen optimized version on xcp? Xencenter is not installed, so I only have xe.

Any help is welcome. 

Regards

L. Arnold's picture

L. Arnold - Fri, 2015/11/20 - 19:18

Anyone experienced with Linode and dropping a XEN Tarball into a Secondary DRIVE, then toggling the Boot Drives?

http://www.linode.com

I expect I have a permissions issue but tbh I am not sure.  Files

I Created a Mount on my Default Linode XEN build.

Uploaded the TKL Tarball

Extracted the TARBALL

Toggled the Boot.

Restarted.

Linode Says the system is running but I can't accdess anything.  SSH is actively refused.

When I log back in with the XEN Drive secondary, I can mount it and all the Files seem to be in place for the TKL build.

Thoughts on this?

L. Arnold's picture

L. Arnold - Sat, 2015/11/21 - 00:37

Trick was making my Block Assignment look like this:

/dev/xvda  -- None -- 
/dev/xvdb  -- 256MB Swap Image TKL Odoo XEN Recovery - Finnix (iso) 
/dev/xvdc  -- TKL Odoo XEN 

 

I had been trying to run the  TKL Odoo XEN on xvda and it kept giving me the original LINODE Boot Block.

Worked through the Firstboot Inithooks etc which was cool to see.

You can actually reset the default foot password In LINODE before the Inithook which was suprising actually.

Anyway.  Good experience.

Wanting to try it on the HUB next.  (Odoo not quite loaded there yet)

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Mon, 2015/11/23 - 02:00
Thanks for posting, that will no doubt be useful for others.

As for Odoo on the Hub. I'm not sure when but will hopefully be up and ready by week's end. (No promises though...)

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