Live CD (Xen 3.2 + Debian 5.0)

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Xen Live CD

Welcome to the Xen Live CD v2.0!

The Xen Live CD brings together several features and attempts to show many different situations, as far as possible, in a clear and functional way. For example, different architectures of the Hypervisor, pre-configured virtual machines with different kernel of dom0, virtual framebuffer enabled for virtual work stations, extra examples with SDL console enabled, demonstration of conversion between machines HVM / PVM, several methods of how to make a virtual hard disk, among many other examples of what can be done with Xen.

The Xen Live CD is actually a Debian Lenny 5.0. Anyone can create their own version of Xen Live CD, since there is available a ISO generator based on the live-helper.

The Quick Guide is available in three languages, Portuguese, English and Spanish.

This project was developed at the Worldweb's lab to the community.

The Xen Live CD was created using the Debian Live Project.

Some features

  • The version i386 of the Xen Live CD has a Xen Hypervisor for 64-bits CPUs as an option in GRUB's menu. You can use without any problem, a 32-bits dom0/domU on top of a 64-bits hypervisor.
  • The Xorg open source X Window System.
  • Basic Gnome Desktop.
  • Five tools ready to use for the management of the system, they are: the command `xm' of the Xen, the libvirt, the program virt-manager, the tool xen-tools and program Convirt.
  • Two read-only root file systems that are used by four virtual machines, two servers and two work stations. The servers (server01 and server02) make use of the file "ubuntu-8.10-server-i386.squashfs" and the work stations (client01 and client02) make use of the file "ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.squashfs", both located in the CD-ROM of the Xen Live CD.
  • Pre-configured file of a virtual machine to start Windows installation.
  • Example of how to convert Linux virtual machines from HVM to PVM. With the new paravirt_ops, this can be done smoothly.
  • Also there is a pre-configured file of a virtual machine to start Debian Installer within a Paravirtual domU.
  • Three different methods to create the virtual hard disks of their virtual machines, sparse files, discs in LVM and partitions in LVM.
  • To explore the possibilities, the tools vblade and aoetools was added to work with the AoE protocol, the Redhat Cluster Suite to make the LVM cluster aware, the virtual switch VDE2 with its web interface VDEtelweb and vconfig to deal with VLANs.

Requirements to run the Xen Live CD

Minimal:

  • 1 computer with a minimum of 1G of RAM;
  • 1 compatible network card (recognized as eth0);
  • 1 good video board.
  • You actualy can run Xen Live CD on every computer compatible with Debian.

To make extra virtual machines:

  • 1 optional hard disk or network attached storage, used to host virtual disks of your new virtual machines.

Download

There are i386 and amd64 versions available for download. The ISO generator of the Xen Live CD is the package xenlivecd-0.8.2.tar.gz.

Download the CD-ROM ISO images of the Xen Live CD v2.0:

From Xen.org:

Xen Live CD i386 - md5

Xen Live CD amd64 - md5

ISO Generator:

xenlivecd-0.8.2.tar.gz - md5

Burning the ISO image

On your CD writer software, you have to choose the option to burn an existing CD image to disc, just like in the Brasero, K3b or wodim...

wodim -v livecd-xen-3.2-0.8.2-i386.iso
wodim -v livecd-xen-3.2-0.8.2-amd64.iso

The Xen Live CD generator at github

The development of the Xen live CD is being held in the social coding network called github.

To get the stable version from git, visit the address [1], switch to tag v0.8.2 and make the download of the source. To download the development version, use the following command:

git clone git://github.com/tmartinx/xenlivecd.git

I'll be happy with any help from the community to make the Xen Live CD even better! So let's start coding!

ToDo list for the release 0.8.3

  • Review of the translation into English of the Quick Guide;
  • Configure Convirt;
  • Optimize the build process;
  • Add Xen Windows GPL PV drivers;
  • Add a pre-configured example of a Opensolaris 2008.11 domU in HVM and PVM mode;
  • Add list here...

Thanks to

Worldweb Internet Hosting, in the hosting and development of this project.

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