Re: disappointing upgrade to NetBSD 5.0

[Sarton O'Brien <bsd-xen%roguewrt.org@localhost>]

On 26/05/2009 3:46 PM, Dan Engholm wrote:
> To the experts,

Sorry but I'm replying anyway :P

> I can't be sure what I am doing to get the problem to occur, but it seems
> to be network related.  Looking around Google, I found one thread in
> port-xen with a similar description but it dead ended with no resolution.
> (see http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2009/01/18/msg004686.html)  I
> thought that since I was still using Xen 2, I should look at this as an
> opportunity to upgrade to Xen 3.  It was a further learning experience but
> I did manage to get Domain0 up and running and also got my user domain
> created and booting.  But, before it finished its rc script, it died:

I'm running a CURRENT dom0 kernel on 5.0 userland with xen33. I had 
issues with earlier versions of Xen. I keep moving forward with Xen3 and 
it seems to keep me ahead of the main problems, with the exception of an 
off by 1 issue here and there ;)

> I'm stuck now and don't know where to go from here.  I can't move forward
> and I can't stay where I am.  It would be very painful, but I could
> downgrade back to 4.0.1.  I'm not doing anything strange here.  All of the
> NetBSD kernels I use are generic, as in not built by me.  I would prefer to
> move ahead to Xen 3 so I will say that the Xen kernel is from pkgsrc-2009Q1
> xenkernel3 as are xentools3.  The NetBSD kernels were copied from the
> NetBSD 5.0 i386 CD ISO image.  Any hints for getting this to work at all
> under Xen 3 or even working around the reliability of Xen 2 would be
> greatly appreciated.

Mine are all CURRENT GENERIC. All xen related software is 33.

> Since the upgrade, my user domain no longer boots without intervention.  It
> does not figure out on its own where the root partition is so I have to
> manually enter "xbd0a" from the Xen console.  The configuration file has
> 'root = "/dev/xbd0a"' in it as it has since I started using Xen.  This is
> true regardless of which version of Xen I use.

Ah, this is an old one :) ... things have got a little simpler.

A config from a very standard domu that I have:

kernel = "/domu-netbsd-amd64"
memory = 512
name = "spike"
disk = [ 'file:/usr/pkg/etc/xen/spike-vnd.img,0,w','phy:/dev/sd0a,1,w' ]
vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:3b:07:01,bridge=bridge0' ]

Only specify the boot device if you have to. I think Jean-Yves was 
correct with the syntax. You can also use 'bootdev=' instead.

> Also, I got burned by Xen telling me that the "nics" configuration option
> is obsolete.  The man page says that it's still valid and that its default
> value is 1.  If I don't have a "nics = 1" line in my configuration file, no
> NICs are created and the creation fails because it can't configure the
> network.  What gives?

No need for a nics line, just ensure you have the relevant vif statement.

Hope that helps.

Sarton