Thanks to some hardware failures (fat caps), I’ve been without opensuse on a desktop for a while. * I’d like to build a new desktop PC where I run win7 as a VM, i.e. opensuse and win7 in one box. [Make that two blown mobos, since I had one for windows and another for opensuse.] The notion of VM didn’t appeal to me until the advent of mobos with 8 dimm slots, i.e. desktops that are similar to small servers.
All that said, I’d like for the moment to take the opensuse 12.1 on my notebook and load the Xen kernel. Can I later switch back to the plain kernel. Or do I leave the Xen kernel installed and not run an VMs? Basically I want to familiarize myself with Xen before building the desktop box.
Thus I want what is basically a single user dual OS box. The problem with reading about Xen on the internet is the threads are mostly enterprise scale for sys admins that already know much about VM. I noticed Novell has some documents for Xen on their enterprise Suse. Are these useful for opensuse? I’d like to use Yast as much as possible, while most documents are not specific to suse.
Sorry about the rambling, but now you know my intentions.*
So you need to install the Virtualization through YaST and as of openSUSE 12.1, we determined it does not work with systemd, but you can switch to System V if you want to. Its my suggestion as a new user, to try out VirtualBox first, which works fine with systemd and to not try to get 3D graphics working in Windows 7 and to stick with the 32 bit versions. I have had good success with Windows XP, Vista and 7 using 32 bit setup in VirtualBox but to forgo any attempt to get 3D working. I have had good success using all built-in Windows apps and MS Office. I have had good success with iTunes and an iPod in a VM using VirtualBox. I don’t suggest any sort of high powered Windows game and you will have better luck with a dual boot system or trying out Wine for any such games.
Anytime you update your kernel version, you must reload the VirtualBox kernel drivers. I have a bash script that can enable something called DKMS that will reload VirtualBox kernel drivers anytime the kernel is updated:
If I am going to do a VM, it will be in Xen. I rather not take the performance hit running windows through other virtualization schemes, even it easier to implement.
Let me see if I can simplify my question. If I install Xen, I assume I will get another entry in grub, i.e. select the kernal to use. If that is the case, can I simply go back and forth between plain opensuse and opensuse with Xen.
I’m not opposed to buying a book (ack, someone who supports authors!) if you have a suggestion. I trolled Amazon and the books aren’t up to date, but I don’t know how much that matters. What I don’t want is a book on how to run a datacenter with Xen, but rather just one PC.
Using opensuse 12.1, Virtual Machine Manager, I immediately got the error “unable to connect to ‘localhost:8000’: Connection refused”…
I tried to fix /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp substituting #xend_unix_server no
with
xend_unix_server yes
but that didn’t resolve. All services xend and libvirt are running. What’s wrong so far ?
Is there something to expect from Xen running on opensuse 12.1 one day?
Is it better to go for VirtualBox or KVM ?
Any advice is more than welcome !
I can say that there is more help here for VirtualBox, its free (for Linux personnel use) and it works very well for me. Have a look at the following link.
Thx James,
I could finally have Xen Virtual Machine Manager Connected and a virtual machine created. Adjusting Relocation Server Configuration settings and adjusting Firewall. I could have it work with firewall off, but then it is complaining with VNC port 5904…
I had played in the past with Virtual Box or Vmware on Windows with several heavy App Servers on the hypervisor, but overall performance were superior with Xen (SLES 11 SP1).
I really wanted to get the last openSuse 12.1 flavour with last Xen 4.1, but I realize that I will have to dig further into security settings, because openSuse 12.1-Xen doesn’t let simply let you play fool.
Will eventually comeback to elaborate when things get clearer.
I finally went through the connect localhost issue and had Xen virtual machine running properly.
I uncommented the line for the Xen-API server : this gives basically no restriction for a unix direct connection
and commented out the http, relocation and unix server ones. It is a matter of configuring according to what we want.
First VirtualBox is much better these days speed wise and worth a serious look. However, as a successful user of Xen, you should consider making a write up on how you made it work. I would put it up on line here if it looked good to me and we can get others to pipe in as well. I would look at it as a chance to document the steps so you would know them the next time they are needed. You would have a better handle on the procedure and be helping others here as well. Its not required of course, but I would love to see you give it a try. And congratulations on sticking with it till you got it done right.
As I explained I could make it work without tweaking anything else than /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp. But then I decided to get back to a bare openSuse 12.1 install (without Xen pattern) and apply all patches for it. Then I installed xen, xen-tools package with 1 click install from opensuse dwnload side. Xen is now at 4.1.2_17 1.10.1 . Then checked it out in Yast Software Mgt, and completed with xen-install-initrd without beeing too sure…
And surprise after configuring manually network services ifup, except for the xen bridge, I install Xen hypervisor (useless as already done by the install).
Reboot into Xen, and as I said the surprise was that xl info gave me a warning that I should still use xm commands.
Creation of Virtual Machine for SLES 11 SP2 took 14 minutes, Windows 7 about the same. And the two machines are really at the expected speed, I am talking about two app servers with dbms SAP HANA and MaxDB for the other one.
Really good stuff.
But again, this is way better with a bare openSuse 12.1 install.
Sorry but VirtualBox’s speed and compatibility is very poor. It has a lot of problems with many USB devices that are not storage or HID devices (and even there they are relatively slow to other solutions), Xen and VMWare far greater speed and device compatibility. I seriously wouldn’t recommend VirtualBox for anything but a last resort and if the better solutions are unavailable.
I guess just how fast VirtualBox works depends on how fast your PC works. On a i7 PC I have been able to compile a kernel in 24 minutes in a VM using VirtualBox when compared to 47 minutes on a real Intel i5 laptop. Doing a kernel compile is a very CPU intensive task. I have been able to run two VM session at the same time with no detectable slow down. It would be interesting for you to try the same thing in a VM on your machine and see what you get ( S.A.K.C.). This is using the most recent release of VirtualBox (4.1.18).
I am very happy you have found a VM solution you like and use, but VirtualBox is no slouch in my opinion.
If that you are getting that kind of performance out of Virtualbox then you can expect that compile time to drop drasticaly using Xen or VMWare. Frankly I’m surprised that it takes that long to compile a kernel on your system. You should be getting much lower times on kernel compilation with both systems.
A real kernel compile takes between 8 and 11 minutes on my main system and it depends on the kernel config you use. SAKC has a mode where it compiles only active modules which comes in at just 2 minutes, but unless you have everything you ever want to use at one time plugged in, its kind of cray to use that mode. Getting a compile in 24 minutes is good in a VM, trust me. I have spent a lot of time compiling kernels on all sorts of machines both VM and real. I would consider doing a compile in 17 minutes on your PC a good compile time. It is very interesting to compile a kernel with SAKC and look at your CPU usage, it will top out all CPU resources on your PC while running. Anyway, I love to hear about compile time results and any and all comments concerning using SAKC.
I would really like to give you compile time comparisons with the various vm with SKAC but unfortunatly that script always complains about not being able to fine the linux tar ball even though it is present in the Downloads folder.
S.A.K.C. - SUSE Automated Kernel Compiler - Version 2.75
The Kernel Source file: --> linux-3.5.2.tar.bz2 <-- was not Found!
dean@linux-a2jp:~/Downloads> ls lin*
linux-3.5.2.tar.bz2 linux-3.6-rc1.tar.bz2
dean@linux-a2jp:~/Downloads>
S.A.K.C. - SUSE Automated Kernel Compiler - Version 2.75
The Kernel Source file: --> linux-3.6-rc1.tar.bz2 <-- was not Found!
dean@linux-a2jp:~/Downloads> ls lin*
linux-3.5.2.tar.bz2 linux-3.6-rc1.tar.bz2
dean@linux-a2jp:~/Downloads>
Well first of all, VMware Fusion does not appear to be a free product. $50 may not be a lot, but VituralBox’s Price to performance for Linux individuals is much better. The speed comparisons in the article matches up to the difference you find. As for your compile times, indeed using the the Turbo Mode is faster and a standard compile will be much slower. I will have to give the SAKC Turbo Mode a try in VirtualBox and see what I get. Did you get to the bottom of your SAKC error you had in your previous message? I just download the kernel tarballs unmodified from the kernel.org website and keep them in my $HOME/Downloads folder. There are many modifications you can make at the start of the bash script if you wish to do something else.
The issue is in the script if you follow the instructions by specifying the tarball as per the instructions in your write up.
Into your downloads folder. Open up a terminal session, change to your downloads folder and run the command:
Code:
sakc kernel_file_name.bz2
I found out if you just type sakc without specifying the tarball then the selection there works.
Well first of all, VMware Fusion does not appear to be a free product. $50 may not be a lot, but VituralBox’s Price to performance for Linux individuals is much better.
Well you get what you pay for in this case. If you really want to see a nose dive in performance, try compiling a kernel on a hooked up USB drive in Virtualbox. Just doing so drastically increases your compile time in Vbox (yes the USB plugins are installed on it). The compilation times increases from 12 minutes to more then double @ 25 minutes. With VMWare it doesn’t even register a change in compile time and stays @ 8 minutes.
VBox’s USB enumeration problems, poor graphics support and bottlenecking of CPU performance easily makes that purchase price a bargain.