Create New Xen VM from Scratch

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Create VM

  • Create directory where you want to VM to reside 
 mkdir /var/vm/minnow
  • On Fedora Core, the script xenguest-install.py can be used to create a new VM 
 xenguest-install.py -h
 xenguest-install.py -n minnow -r 512 -f /var/vm/minnow/disk0.img \
  -l http://joe.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/x86_64/os \
  -p -s 10

Another good mirror is mirror.mcs.anl.gov/fedora-linux-core/5/x86_64/os

  • Once the script is launched, the screen will switch into the console for the VM
  • Follow these instructions for guest O/S installation
  • After the O/S installation, click to reboot and you will receive the following message 
 If your install completed successfully, you can restart your
 guest by running 'xm create -c minnow'.
  • Before starting the guest VM, move the configuration file to /var/vm/minnow and add the extension .conf 
 mv /etc/xen/minnow /var/vm/minnow/minnow.conf
  • Edit minnow.conf and change on_crash to destroy 
 on_crash = 'destroy'
  • Also, create a symlink in /etc/xen/auto so the VM will be restarted automatically on server reboots 
 ln -s /var/vm/minnow/minnow.conf /etc/xen/auto
  • You may also want to increase the number of virtual CPUs assigned to the VM to greater than the default of 1 by adding the following line to minnow.conf 
 vcpus = 8
  • Start the new VM 
 cd /var/vm/minnow
 xm create -c minnow.conf
  • Return to these instructions, and follow the remaining instruction for server configuration (starting at the inittab section).
  • If this is a new type of server, you may want to consider shutting it down at this point and save a copy of it as a reusable template for future VMs of this type. Here is the list of existing templates.

Other Resources

Another excellent document can be found here

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