Virtual Machine

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Virtual Machine

• This is a presentation on how to install and
  begin using Xen.

Researched and Created by Bryan Bankhead
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About Xen

• Xen is a virtual machine program that is very
  lightweight. Unlike most Virtual Machine programs
  that bring up the OS in a window, with Xen you
  actually boot to your Virtual Machine with Xen in
  the background. By doing this you can run
  multiple machines simultaneously without wasting
  as many resources. FYI Xen is only for Linux and
  it is a little bit more complicated that other
  alternatives.

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Step One Downloading

• The first step in this process is to download the
  Xen program for your Linux Operating System. This
  can be done by going to www.xensource.com/products
  /downloads

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Step Two Installing

• Tarball- Once you have downloaded the tarball
  extract it to your desktop. Then open your
  terminal, and navigate to the extracted folder
  and run sh ./install.sh.
• RPM- To install a RPM download it, navigate to it
  with the terminal and type the
• command rpm -ivh xen-version.rpm.

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Step Three Editing the Bootloader

• Once you have installed Xen you will need to add
  Xen to your bootloader so that you can boot to
  the virtual machine. If you use Grub as your boot
  loader the config file is located in
  /etc/grub.conf.
• To get there go to the terminal and type cd
  /etc then type vi grub.conf
• Note Grub entries will be different based on
  hardware and volume names.

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Step Three cont grub.conf entry

• This is an example of the grub entry.
• Note some parts of this entry will vary.

This is the part you want
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Step Four Reboot

• Once you have created the entry in grub.conf
  reboot and select Xen in the bootloader to test
  it. If it works it will boot up and bring you
  your native operating system. At first it may
  seem like nothing happened but if you type the
  command
• uname -r it should come up with something like
  2.6.16-xen.
  

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Step Five Virt-Manager

• The next step in the process is to setup a
  virtual machine. If you take the time there is a
  very nice program called virt-manager. It adds a
  GUI to Xen making it much easier to add and
  maintain virtual machines. This can be found at
• http//virt-manager.et.redhat.com/index.html

FYI Fedora Core 6 comes pre-installed with Xen
and Virt-manager.
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Step Six Using Virt-manager

• Click connect

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Step Six Using Virt-manager

• Then you can create or edit your virtual machines
  through your Virt manager.

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Step Six Using Virt-manager

• You can also connect to the virtual machines to
  work on the individual virtual machines.

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The End

• For more information you can visit
  www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/readmes/us
  er.pdf
• and for more information on virt-manager
• you can visit
• http//virt-manager.et.redhat.com/index.html