Enterprise Linux 4 - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5 - VIRTUALIZATION GUIDE Manual

Chapter 11. Xen Para-virtualized Drivers
/dev/xvdb1 -/mnt/pvdisk_p1
/dev/xvdb2 -/mnt/pvdisk_p2
Performance tip
Using a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 host (dom0), the "noapic" parameter should be
added to the kernel boot line in your virtual guest's /boot/grub/grub.conf entry as
seen below. Keep in mind your architecture and kernel version may be different.
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-67.EL ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/rhel4_x86_64
rhgb noapic
A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 dom0 will not need this kernel parameter for the guest.
Important
The Itanium (ia64) binary RPM packages and builds are not presently available.
11.3.3. Installation and Configuration of Para-virtualized Drivers on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
This section contains detailed instructions for the para-virtualized drivers in a Red Hat Enterprise 4
guest operating system.
Note
These packages do not support booting from a para-virtualized disk. Booting the guest
operating system kernel still requires the use of the emulated IDE driver, while any other
(non-system) user-space applications and data can use the para-virtualized block device
drivers.
Driver Installation
The list below covers the steps to install a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 guest with para-virtualized
drivers.
1. Copy the kmod-xenpv, modules-init-tools and modversions RPMs for your hardware
architecture and kernel variant to your guest operating system.
2. Use the rpm utility to install the RPM packages. Make sure you have correctly identified which
package you need for your guest operating system variant and architecture. An updated module-
init-tools is required for this package, it is available with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4-6-z kernel
or newer.
[root@rhel4]# rpm --ivh modversions
[root@rhel4]# rpm --Uvh module-init-tools
[root@rhel4]# rpm --ivh kmod-xenpv*
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ext3 defaults
ext3 defaults
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