3.1. Common installation steps

3.1. Common installation steps

The list below covers the high level steps common across all guest operating system versions.

  1. Copy the RPMs for your hardware architecture to a suitable location in your guest operating system. Your home directory is sufficient. If you do not know which RPM you require verify against the table at Chapter 2, Para-virtualization Restrictions and Support.

  2. Use the rpm utility to install the RPM packages. The rpm utility will install the following four new kernel modules into /lib/modules/[%kversion][%kvariant]/extra/xenpv/%release:

    • the PCI infrastructure module, xen-platform-pci.ko,

    • the ballooning module, xen-balloon.ko,

    • the virtual block device module, xen-vbd.ko,

    • and the virtual network device module, xen.vnif.ko.

  3. If the guest operating does not support automatically loading the para-virtualized drivers (for example Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3) perform the required post-install steps to copy the drivers into the operating system specific locations.

  4. Shutdown your guest operating system.

  5. Reconfigure the guest operating system configuration file on the host to use the installed para-virtualized drivers.

  6. Remove the “type=ioemu” entry for the network device.

  7. Add any additional storage entities you want to use for the para-virtualized block device driver.

  8. Restart your guest using the “xm create YourGuestName” command where YourGuestName is the name of the guest operating system.

  9. Reconfigure the guest network