Ubuntu 10.04 on XenServer 5.6

2010-06-29

These instructions are taken from here and updated and formatted a bit by me. They assume that you are installing the server version of Ubuntu 10.04 and the release version of Citrix XenServer 5.6.

  1. First create a VM in XenCenter.
    • Use the other install media template.
  2. Install ubuntu to your liking and reboot into the new system
  3. Tell getty to display on hvc0 (This does do the trick of getting a display on the console, but I am still unable to login or get any key-presses to work at all. I have to login via ssh to manage the system.)
    1. Copy the existing tty1.conf
      sudo cp /etc/init/tty1.conf /etc/init/hvc0.conf
    2. Edit it to replace “tty1” with “hvc0”
      sudo nano -w /etc/init/hvc0
  4. Create a link in /boot to itself:
    sudo ln -s . /boot/boot
  5. Install openssh-server:
    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
  6. Shutdown the VM.
  7. On the XenServer Console:
    1. Retrieve the UUID for the VM. Assuming your VM is named “ubuntu10”:
      xe vm-list name-label=ubuntu10 params=uuid
    2. Retrieve the VBD UUID for the storage attached to the VM.
      xe vm-disk-list uuid=<UUID>
    3. Clear out the HVM boot policy.
      xe vm-param-set uuid=<UUID> HVM-boot-policy=
    4. Set the PV bootloader to pygrub.
      xe vm-param-set uuid=<UUID> PV-bootloader=pygrub
    5. Lastly, set the VBD for the VM to be bootable.
      xe vbd-param-set uuid=<VBD UUID> bootable=true
    6. The original instructions said to patch GrubConf.py in the system-wide python modules directory. This is not required as of XenServer 5.6.
  8. Start the VM and login. If your console fails to appear, try connecting to the VM using SSH. If you missed they step about getting getty to output to hvc0, the login prompt will never appear.
  9. Attach the xs-tools.iso to the VM and mount the image.
    sudo mount /dev/cdrom1 /mnt
  10. Install the XenServer tools. Make sure you use the proper file for your architecture (amd64 or i386). A quick “ls” will confirm the version of the utilities in your xs-tools.iso. File names may (will) differ.
    sudo dpkg -i /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_5.5.901-562_i386.deb
  11. Unmount the iso image and then detach it in XenCenter.
    sudo umount /mnt
  12. Reboot the VM

You are now up and running. Update the system. The original author reports issues like XenCenter not displaying the NIC IP and no performance data.