The newest tested stable Xen Dom0 kernel on Fedora is Xenified kernel 2.6.32.13. Please refer

http://pkill.info/b/2252/setting-up-stable-xen-dom0-with-fedora-xen-4-0-0-with-xenified-linux-kernel-2-6-32-13-in-fedora-12/

It is recommended by now. It is very stable according to our test.

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In this post, the detailed tutorial of seting up Xen 3.4.1 dom0 on top of Fedora 11 with kernel 2.6.29 will be introduced.

Hardware:
Platform 1 (This introduction is based on this platform):
IBM eServer X3650M2:
2 x Intel Xeon X5570 2.93 8MB Cache Processor
4 x 4GB DDR3-1333 Memory
2 x 300GB 10K-SFF Hot-Swap HD – RAID 0

Platform 2:
2 x Intel Xeon E5520 2.27GHz 8MB cache
6 x 4G DDRIII REG ECC 1333
2 x ST 1000G NS 32M

The instruction below is based on platform 1.

Disk Partitions:

# df -hT
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2     ext4     58G  6.3G   49G  12% /
/dev/sda1     ext3    388M   52M  316M  15% /boot
/dev/sda5     ext4    490G   14G  452G   3% /home

Linux:
Fedora 11, updated to 23-09-2009.

No xen and libvirt installed:

# rpm -qa | grep xen
# rpm -qa | grep virt

And SELinux is diabled.

Packages:
Xen 3.4.1: http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.4.1/xen-3.4.1.tar.gz

linux-2.6.29-xen-r4-aka-suse-xenified-2.6.29-62.1: here

download these packages and unzip them.

Installation:
1. Install Xen:

# sh ./install.sh

1. Install Xen:
Copy all the content of xen to “/usr/src/xen/3.4.1/xen-3.4.1/”

$ make world
# make install

2. Install Kernel
The .config file I used can be downloaded here: https://sites.google.com/a/pkill.info/pkill/home/kernel-dom0/kernel_config_xen_zma?attredirects=0&d=1

My .config file can be used directly. Or menuconfig can be used:

# make menuconfig

When using “make menuconfig”, some options require special attention:

Subarchitecture Type (Enable Xen compatible kernel)
( ) PC-compatible
(X) Enable Xen compatible kernel
( ) Support for ScaleMP vSMP
Device Drivers --->
XEN --->
[*] Privileged Guest (domain 0)
<*>Backend driver support
<*>Block-device backend driver
<*>Block-device tap backend driver
<*> Network-device backend driver

After configuration:

# make
# make modules_install install

3. Create a Grub entry:

title xen 3.4.1 - kernel 2.6.29-xen-r4
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /xen-3.4.1.gz console=vga vga=ask noreboot
    module /vmlinuz-2.6.29-xen-r4 ro \
        root=UUID=ac0c173e-abca-4795-a7d6-23444e730d40
    module /initrd-2.6.29-xen-r4.img

The “root=UUID=ac0c173e-abca-4795-a7d6-23444e730d40″ will be different depending on the partitions of the system.

4. Add xend and xendomains to services that automatically start when system boot.

# chkconfig --add xend
# chkconfig --add xendomains
# chkconfig --list | grep xend
xend            0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
xendomains      0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

Then boot the system in the xen environment. the xm should can be used:

# xm info
host                   : lgcpu3
release                : 2.6.29-xen-r4
version                : #2 SMP Wed Sep 16 11:10:45 EDT 2009
machine                : x86_64
nr_cpus                : 16
nr_nodes               : 1
cores_per_socket       : 4
threads_per_core       : 2
cpu_mhz                : 2933
hw_caps                : bfebfbff:28100800:00000000:00000340:009ce3bd:00000000:00000001:00000000
virt_caps              : hvm
total_memory           : 16373
free_memory            : 127
node_to_cpu            : node0:0-15
node_to_memory         : node0:127
xen_major              : 3
xen_minor              : 4
xen_extra              : .1
xen_caps               : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64
xen_scheduler          : credit
xen_pagesize           : 4096
platform_params        : virt_start=0xffff800000000000
xen_changeset          : unavailable
cc_compiler            : gcc version 4.4.1 20090725 (Red Hat 4.4.1-2) (GCC)
cc_compile_by          : root
cc_compile_domain      : ibm.net
cc_compile_date        : Wed Sep 16 08:17:31 EDT 2009
xend_config_format     : 4

# xm list
Name                                        ID   Mem VCPUs      State   Time(s)
Domain-0                                     0 16043    16     r-----   3903.8

Then xm can be used to create and manage virtual machines on the server.

Problems:

There are problems with ipv6 modules.

If ipv6 is not used, just diable it:

In /etc/modprobe.conf

add:
alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off

Problems:

Some time some CPU stuck! We can get a message like this from Dom0:

“soft lockup – CPU#x stuck for xxx s!”

There is a trick to by pass this problem:

Change in the /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp file the line

- (dom0-cpus 0)
+ (dom0-cpus 1)

The Dom0 will switch to UP mode from SMP mode.

Updated on 17 Jan. 2010. Add another platform.

Updated on 26 Feb. 2010. Change format.

Read more:

• Setting up Stable Xen Dom0 with Fedora: Xen 4.0.0 with Xenified Linux Kernel 2.6.32.13 in Fedora 12
• Setting up Xen Dom0 on Fedora : Xen 3.4.1 with Linux Kernel 2.6.29 on Fedora 12
• Setting up Xen pvops Dom0 on Fedora : Xen 3.4.2 + Kernel 2.6.31 with paravirt_ops in Fedora 12
• Setting up Stable Xen DomU with Fedora: Unmodified Fedora 12 on top of Xenified Fedora 12 Dom0 with Xen 4.0.0
• Setting up eCryptFS in Linux
• Linux Setting Date, Time and Timezone