Installation guide

Chapter 8.

Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

as a para-virtualized guest on Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5

This section describes how to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as a para-virtualized guest on Red

Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Para-virtualization is only available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 hosts. Red

Hat Enterprise Linux 6 uses the PV-opts features of the Linux kernel to appear as a compatible Xen

para-virtualized guest.

Important note on para-virtualization

Para-virtualization only works with the Xen hypervisor. Para-virtualization does not work with the

KVM hypervisor. This procedure is for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 or newer.

8.1. Using virt-install

This section covers creating a para-virtualized Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 guest on a Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5 host using the virt-install command. For instructions on virt-manager,

refer to the procedure in Section 8.2, “Using virt-manager”.

This method installs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 from a remote server hosting the network installation

tree. The installation instructions presented in this section are similar to installing from the minimal

installation live CD-ROM.

Automating with virt-install

Guests can be created with the command line virt-install tool. The --vnc option shows the

graphical installation. The name of the guest in the example is rhel6PV, the disk image file is

rhel6PV.img and a local mirror of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 installation tree is http://

example.com/installation_tree/RHEL6-x86/. Replace those values with values for your

system and network.

# virt-install --name rhel6PV \

--disk /var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel6PV.img,size=5 \

--vnc --paravirt --vcpus=2 --ram=1024 \

-location=http://example.com/installation_tree/RHEL6-x86/

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be installed without a graphical interface or manual input. Use a

Kickstart file to automate the installation process. This example extends the previous example

with a Kickstart file, located at http://example.com/kickstart/ks.cfg, to fully automate

the installation.

# virt-install --name rhel6PV \

--disk /var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel6PV.img,size=5 \

--nographics --paravirt --vcpus=2 --ram=1024 \

-location=http://example.com/installation_tree/RHEL6-x86/ \

-x "ks=http://example.com/kickstart/ks.cfg"