Installation Guide

XenServer Virtual Machine Installation Guide Installing Linux VMs 29
wget -O - \ http://updates-int.uk.xensource.com/XenServer/5.5.0/GPG-KEY \
| sudo apt-key add -
Debian Etch 4.0
XenServer includes a custom Xen kernel for Debian VMs installed via the built-in template to provide full
performance optimizations.
When a Debian VM is first booted, you are prompted for details such as hostname and root passwords.
This prevents a freshly installed Debian guest from rebooting until the requested information is entered. In
order to bypass the first-boot scripts and boot non-interactively, you must pass the noninteractive flag
to the kernel arguments.
After installation, the time-zone in a Debian VM defaults to UTC (see the section called “Time handling in
Linux VMs”). You can change the local value using the tzconfig command.
To prepare a Debian guest for cloning (see the section called “MAC address”), Ethernet name persis-
tence must be disabled. For Debian Sarge and Etch VMs, name persistence is controlled through /etc/
udev/rules.d/z45_persistent-net-generator.rules, which is used to generate /etc/udev/
rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules. To prepare an Etch VM for cloning, remove /etc/udev/
rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules:
rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules
Persistence is re-enabled on reboot. To permanently disable persistence, remove /etc/udev/rules.d/
z45_persistent-net-generator.rules.
To avoid receiving the message There is no public key available for the following key
IDs when running apt-get update, run the following command to download the appropriate key:
wget -O - \ http://updates-int.uk.xensource.com/XenServer/5.5.0/GPG-KEY \
| sudo apt-key add -
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
XenServer includes a custom port of the RHEL3.8 kernel with native Xen PV VM support. This kernel is
installed during the P2V process for RHEL3.6-3.8 guests. Because the kernel is based on Linux 2.4, the
following limitations apply:
• A maximum of 3 virtual network interfaces is supported.
• VMs with multiple VCPUs cannot be suspended. To suspend these VMs, reduce the number of VCPUs
to 1 while the VM is halted.
Before performing a P2V conversion from an existing RHEL3 installation, ensure that the /etc/fstab file
in the VM contains an entry for the /boot mount point. This partition contains the files which are changed
by the P2V process to give the resulting VM a PV kernel.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
XenServer includes the RHEL 4.7 kernel with additional bug fixes and expanded Xen support. This kernel
is installed with the Citrix Tools for Virtual Machines installation, but not in the RHEL 4.5/4.6/4.7 default
installations.