Upgrading Opensuse 13.2 kernel in a Xen Guest breaks networking and access to it?

English Virtualization
1

A dev here needs remote hosted access to Opensuse 13.2 with a newer kernel.

After reading up on different hosting environments used with Opensuse I decided to build up a Linode VPS for it.

This weekend I first setup a new test box here locally.

I added the http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard repo to a clean install of Opensuse 13.2 and installed the latest kernel from there, 3.19.1-1.ga04cebc-default.

I recreated the initrd. Then rebooted. It works great.

Next I went to do the same thing for the Linode.

I installed Opensuse 13.2 base install there using the base install with kernel-xen instead of kernel-default. And xen-tools-domU & xen-libs too.

It boots and runs great.

Next I added the same Kernel:/stable repo and upgraded to 3.19.1-1.ga04cebc-xen. I installed xen-tools-domU & xen-libs from the up to date http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Virtualization/openSUSE_13.2 repo too

I did the mkinitrd like always and rebooted.

I can’t login anymore using ssh.

Luckily I can use Linode’s emergency remote console to get to it and login. I guess its using xl console <guest>.

I can login using the xen console. Networking is offline. I can’t get anywhere.

If I uninstall the upgraded kernel and reinstall the base install then after reboot everything works ok again. I can login using ssh from my office.

What’s wrong with the setup that’s breaking the access?

This is the dmesg output from the boot that fails when using the 3.19.1 Xen VPS guest:

http://paste.opensuse.org/8f97c171

(this forum won’t let me paste the log. too long.)

2

When you say you setup a Linode VPS, this suggests that is your HostOS and you are installing an openSUSE Guest.

The xen kernel is installed <only> in the HostOS (if needed).
You do <not> install the xen kernel into a Guest (unless you’re trying to deploy multiple layers of virtualization which is highly inadvisable). A “normal” kernel you’d normally install in a non-virtual environment should be used in your Guest, ie desktop, default, vanilla, etc.

TSU

3

I stand corrected based on a thread where this topic was discussed on the “opensuse-virtual” mailing list.

Based on the following resource
http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Kernel_Feature_Matrix
It seems that a distro can implement upstream Xen support in different ways… Although the recommended way is to utilize the pvops framework which is integrated into the mainline Linux kernel, current SUSE maintainers feel that the implementation is incomplete.

If the pvops framework was implemented, Xen support in DomU would have been automatically available using an ordinary kernel. But since SUSE distributes kernels using Xenlinux, required features aren’t automatically available in the regular kernels so requires kernel-xen in DomU.

This should provide a foundation for selecting an appropriate kernel in this thread… The OP needs to determine what type of Xen support is implemented by Linode and then install the correspondingly correct kernel.

HTH and clarifying,
TSU