Fedora CoreOS - Xentools installation - For Xenserver VMs - Dummy Mode

Project Discussion
1

Dummy Mode

  1. Mount CD iso
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt
cd /mnt/Linux
  1. Execute install script to check what the packages should be installed and abort
./install.sh
The following changes will be made to this Virtual Machine:
  * packages to be installed/upgraded:
    - xe-guest-utilities-7.11.0-1.x86_64.rpm
    - xe-guest-utilities-xenstore-7.11.0-1.x86_64.rpm

Continue? [y/n] n
Aborting.
  1. Install the packages using rpm-ostree
rpm-ostree install xe-guest-utilities-7.11.0-1.x86_64.rpm xe-guest-utilities-xenstore-7.11.0-1.x86_64.rpm
  1. Copy udev-rule file and startup script file to /etc
cp -f xen-vcpu-hotplug.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
cp -f xe-linux-distribution.service /etc/systemd/system/
  1. Change the path of xentools daemon in startup script file
sed 's/share\/oem\/xs/sbin/g' -i /etc/systemd/system/xe-linux-distribution.service
  1. Enable systemctl script
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/xe-linux-distribution.service
  1. Unmount CD, eject and reboot
cd /
umount /mnt

systemctl reboot
1 Like
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Thanks for writing down here your self-notes, it’s useful for distribution developers to have an insight on what users do when provisioning FCOS instances.

That said, I see you are installing RPMs from a CD and manually tweaking them. I fear that is a very fragile approach and likely to break at some point during an auto-upgrade cycle.

The same RPMs seems to be available in Fedora 32 repos. Did you try just installing those? Is there a reason to carry custom/older ones via a CD?

1 Like
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Hi, thanks. I agree with you.
It was my first installation and I noticed that does not have so much info about installations that use XPC/Xenserver hypervisor.
I followed the Bare Metal Installation Instructions to install Fedora CoreOS, because I didn’t find “how-to” for XCP/Xenserver VMs.

It is usual to install from original ISO of hypervisor to keep strict compatibility but your suggestion is better. Thank you so much.

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:flushed: omg @lucab

rpm-ostree install xe-guest-utilities-latest
1 Like
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Glad that it helped.

Please note that from FCOS point of view, it would be way better to not have any utilities installed directly on the host, but running them in a container (e.g. via podman).
I acknowledge the fact that most of guest utilities are not exactly ready for that right now, but I encourage you to reach out to the Xen upstream and bring up this topic there.