Arch Linux

F

Member

Registered: 2006-10-09

Posts: 322

Xen troubles

Hello. I am trying to get Xen to work properly. Thus far my main guide has been the arch wiki (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xen_Install). The problem I run into is at step 4.2 -- rebooting.

I have installed and configured Xen as outlined in the wikipage, and have also installed kernel26-xen. However, whenever I boot into Xen I get the following error:

Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up.
VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy.
VFS: Insert root floppy and press ENTER.

Now, i'm not sure if this matters but I do have encrypted partitions and swap.

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
...
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata keymap encrypt lvm2 filesystems"

/etc/fstab
...
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd   udf   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/mapper/home /home reiserfs defaults 0 1
/dev/mapper/root / reiserfs defaults 0 1
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
#/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 <-- keep commented out for swap encryption

Here is the relevent part of my grub's menu.list:

/boot/grub/menu.lst
...
# Xen
title Xen [/boot/xen.gz]
root    (hd0,0)
kernel    /xen.gz dom0_mem=262144
module    /vmlinuz-2.6.11.12-xen0 root=/dev/sda3 ro

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img

I tried searching the forums but nobody seems to have run into this problem. Googling also shows some other people that have run into this problem but I can't seem to figure out how they solved it (if they even did manage to). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

boris

Member

Registered: 2006-02-25

Posts: 20

Re: Xen troubles

The encrypted filesystems could be part of the problem -- are the proper kernel modules built/loaded for the xen kernel? The weird part is the system thinking the root fs is on an nfs partition which I don't quite understand how that could be considering there is nothing set in your menu.lst to specify that.

Also as a side note may I suggest using kvm instead of xen? its very small and very quick to compile as modules for your current running kernel and you can still have your 3d acceleration if you run with an nvidia/ati card : )

Thanks,

SomeGuy1337

Member

Registered: 2007-08-18

Posts: 32

Re: Xen troubles

I also ran into this same problem using kernel26-xen from the repos. I have no encrypted or raid devices my root fs is on ext3.

After a few secconds the boot continued after insert floppy and it ran past a bunch of shit for mdadm, reisrfer fs and a few other things also noteably some errors trying to read fd0, i have no floppy.
then it finaly kernel paniced.

did you ever come up with a solution?

indiehead

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2008-03-17

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Xen troubles

i'm having the same problem, any update on this ?

F

Member

Registered: 2006-10-09

Posts: 322

Re: Xen troubles

Hey guys, no I haven't reached a solution and this problem is still hanging in the air.

Next week i'll tackle it again and let you know how it goes. In the mean time if anyone has any ideas, please share!