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Re: disappointing upgrade to NetBSD 5.0



On 26/05/2009 3:46 PM, Dan Engholm wrote:
To the experts,

Sorry but I'm replying anyway :P

I can't be sure what I am doing to get the problem to occur, but it seems
to be network related.  Looking around Google, I found one thread in
port-xen with a similar description but it dead ended with no resolution.
(see http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2009/01/18/msg004686.html)  I
thought that since I was still using Xen 2, I should look at this as an
opportunity to upgrade to Xen 3.  It was a further learning experience but
I did manage to get Domain0 up and running and also got my user domain
created and booting.  But, before it finished its rc script, it died:

I'm running a CURRENT dom0 kernel on 5.0 userland with xen33. I had issues with earlier versions of Xen. I keep moving forward with Xen3 and it seems to keep me ahead of the main problems, with the exception of an off by 1 issue here and there ;)

I'm stuck now and don't know where to go from here.  I can't move forward
and I can't stay where I am.  It would be very painful, but I could
downgrade back to 4.0.1.  I'm not doing anything strange here.  All of the
NetBSD kernels I use are generic, as in not built by me.  I would prefer to
move ahead to Xen 3 so I will say that the Xen kernel is from pkgsrc-2009Q1
xenkernel3 as are xentools3.  The NetBSD kernels were copied from the
NetBSD 5.0 i386 CD ISO image.  Any hints for getting this to work at all
under Xen 3 or even working around the reliability of Xen 2 would be
greatly appreciated.

Mine are all CURRENT GENERIC. All xen related software is 33.

Since the upgrade, my user domain no longer boots without intervention.  It
does not figure out on its own where the root partition is so I have to
manually enter "xbd0a" from the Xen console.  The configuration file has
'root = "/dev/xbd0a"' in it as it has since I started using Xen.  This is
true regardless of which version of Xen I use.

Ah, this is an old one :) ... things have got a little simpler.

A config from a very standard domu that I have:

kernel = "/domu-netbsd-amd64"
memory = 512
name = "spike"
disk = [ 'file:/usr/pkg/etc/xen/spike-vnd.img,0,w','phy:/dev/sd0a,1,w' ]
vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:3b:07:01,bridge=bridge0' ]

Only specify the boot device if you have to. I think Jean-Yves was correct with the syntax. You can also use 'bootdev=' instead.

Also, I got burned by Xen telling me that the "nics" configuration option
is obsolete.  The man page says that it's still valid and that its default
value is 1.  If I don't have a "nics = 1" line in my configuration file, no
NICs are created and the creation fails because it can't configure the
network.  What gives?

No need for a nics line, just ensure you have the relevant vif statement.

Hope that helps.

Sarton


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