Simple VM questions: Installing XP on Xen

I am defected from Ubuntu, and am thoroughly enjoying openSUSE.

I need to run an MS Access (usually run on light weight Windows XP) app, on my work computer. I have run VirtualBox in the past, but interested to tryout other. Looking at Xen. I have not found a good tutorial. I am sure its because its too simple - I am just missing something.

So far, I have installed Xen from YAST2, and saw the message that says “reboot to load your guest OS, and pick advanced options.” I have rebooted, picked Xen options, and it doesn’t pick up the Windows XP CD I left in the drive…

How do I load XP on Xen?

I am running OpenSUSE 13.1/Gnome/x64

After you install Xen (or KVM) using YAST, you have also installed vm-manager and vm-install.

Your next step is to create a Guest using vm-install or first opening vm-manager and then clicking on the button that launches vm-install.
Both vm-manager and vm-install should be new menu items in your Desktop.

The wizard that creates a Guest will walk you through creating a Guest.
After it has been created, it will appear in vm-manager and you can start/stop/etc the vm.

HTH,
TSU

Could you be a little more specific on what you are doing when, please?
First and foremost, have you booted to the Xen hypervisor? If necessary, you are best advised to reconfigure your boot loader to boot the hypervisor, and also make sure to toss out any non-Xen kernels.
Have you invoked virt-manager to create the VM? If yes, what are the parameters that you have picked (please make sure that you have to use a fullvirt VM to be able to run Windows - paravirt won’t work as it doesn’t provide the necessary support).
Also make sure to pick your optical drive as your source of installation.

Then, after you have created the VM, fire it up and install Windows like you would on bare metal.

Anyway, if you are still experiencing difficulties, please feel free to PM me.

Thank you for being helpful. I am still having problems installing a VM on my Toshiba Laptop with openSUSE 13.1/Gnome…

Let me answer your questions:

  • Yes, I have booted to the Xen hypervisor.
  • I went into YaST and added a VM (Windows XP 32 bit). Here are my options:
    [LIST]
  • Virtualization Method: Fully Virtualized
  • Hardware: Initial/Max Memory: 1500 MB, 2 processors, 1 Host Device
  • Peripheral Devices: Graphics: Cirrus Logic, Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster
  • Disks: 8 GB HDD, 0.5 GB CD ROM
  • Network Adapters: Fully virtualized Realtek 8139; Randomly generated MAC address
  • OS Installation: Win XP, instalation source: CD ROM

[/LIST]

The problem I get with this is the error: internal error: No <source> ‘bridge’ attribute specified with <interface type=‘bridge’/>

When I go back into Hardware, to add a bridge, there are only two types (PCI, and USB - no Bridge -type)

I am googling the error, but not seeing any obvious resolution. Any help would be appreciated.

I’d be guessing that your “bridge” and “interface type” errors refer to your network configuration.
There may be a lot required to setup a bridged networking connection, so I’d recommend you initially set up with NAT. You can always easily modify your network configuration for bridged later if you wish.

Other recommended changes and info you may have left out of your configuration…

  • 1 processor. These are virtual processors and unless you have a special reason to configure 2, more than one isn’t going to make a difference. Your HostOS will distribute your processing across all available CPUs at the real, physical level automatically.

  • Especially since I recommend you initially configure your networking as NAT, configure your XP network adapter (in XP) as a full DHCP client.

Speculating generally, my guess that your current “bridged” problem is that you haven’t specified a bridging Linux Bridge Device. If you can get yourself working with NAT verifying you’ve made no mistakes to that point, you can then take the next step and configure a new LBD that supports bridging.

TSU

The way I take it it’s merely a missing or defective <source> definition for the virtual network in the VM declaration.
The rest of the parameters actually appears to be o.k. to me.