Xen inside Parallels Desktop for Mac

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop for Mac' started by aross, Jul 15, 2006.

  1. aross

    aross Bit poster

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  2. constant

    constant Forum Maven

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    1,010
    .
    Is there a purpose besides proof of concept?
    .
     
  3. aross

    aross Bit poster

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    Yes. Xen doesn't yet run on Mac OS X, but we are using it for some of our Linux servers.

    I already have an Apple workstation, and would rather not purchase a second system just to use Xen for testing and development. I need Parallels on my Mac anyway, for Windows compatability testing.
     
  4. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    18
    Xen...

    I've been trying for months now.

    I saw it work twice (thanks, Bjorn!), but couldn't reproduce it myself, nor could the original user. One thing we definitely noticed is that networking can't be bridged, but rather must be host only.

    What I see most of the time is that Xen boots, but the whole Parallels VM crashes when I try to run a guest within Xen. I keep reporting this when it occurs with new versions of Parallels, but obviously (for good reasons) this is way down their list of priorities. Still, if it runs on an x86, it "should" run in Parallels.
     
  5. joem

    joem Forum Maven

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    1,247
    Emulators that use hardware support won't ever run under other emulators. Wait for the Mac version.
     
  6. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    ...won't work...

    (resisting urge to snark)

    >Emulators that use hardware support won't ever run under other emulators. Wait for the Mac version.


    Xen does have a mode that uses hardware support, but that support is quite new (VT), and it also runs on earlier hardware without that support.

    In that mode, I have seen Xen working, and in fact, with the latest version of Parallels (1922), last night I actually reproduced the successes I'd seen earlier. I haven't narrowed down the settings that enabled this fully, but in addition to host-only networking, I believe that at least 1G needs to be assigned to Parallels for a DomU to boot.

    This is great news for me -- because I want to do Xen hacking inside a virtual machine (as opposed to having to reboot my hardware when I cause kernel crashes).
     
  7. Nightwolf

    Nightwolf Member

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    27
    Would be nice to see XEN running inside Parallels. Have to create an test system with XEN running and don't want to boot into linux nor i want to buy an extra machine.
     
  8. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    18
  9. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    Build 3036 totally breaks running Xen as a guest. Before 1970, Dom0 would boot, but Parallels would crash when you ran a DomU inside Xen (inside Parallels). Around 1970 (and a few builds before that), everything was fine, except for the clock synchronization issue.

    Now with 3036 Dom0 won't even boot. It hangs before switching from the XEN boot messages to the Dom0 boot messages. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed, otherwise I'm stuck with 1970.
     
  10. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    Just FYI, Xen is still broken in 3094. Hangs booting Dom0 after clearing RAM.
     
  11. dylanjames

    dylanjames Junior Member

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    As of build 3120, Xen (3.0.2) once again successfully boots, and is able to launch guest domains. Woohoo -- thanks parallels team!
     
  12. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

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    ???

    Not working for me under FC6. -xen kernel can't boot and Parallels crashes.

    Any idea and/or something I'm missing?

    Thanks in advance and thanks to the Parallels Team for their precious work!
     
  13. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

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    17
    Update...

    Hi,
    just a quick update.

    Finally I got Xen working on Dom0 with FC6.
    I still have problems in booting the DomU.

    As soon as I enter "xm create ..." Parallels will completely hang.

    Any help/feedback is appreciated.

    Thanks!
     
  14. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

    Messages:
    17
    PARALLELS BUILD: 3120
    Xen Version: 3.0.4
    OS: FC6

    Another quick update...

    With Intel VT support disable, DomU will boot but Parallels will crash on DomU kernel loading.

    Still investigating.
     
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2007
  15. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

    Messages:
    17
    Log:

    Linux version 2.6.16.33-xen (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 4.1.1 20061011 (Red Hat 4.1.1-30)) #3 SMP Mon Jan 15 17:34:37 CET 2007
    BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
    Xen: 0000000000000000 - 0000000008800000 (usable)
    0MB HIGHMEM available.
    136MB LOWMEM available.
    ACPI in unprivileged domain disabled
    Built 1 zonelists
    Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda1 ro
    Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
    Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
    Initializing CPU#0
    PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 10, 16384 bytes)
    Xen reported: 1410.995 MHz processor.
    Console: colour dummy device 80x25
    Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
    Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
    Software IO TLB disabled
    vmalloc area: c9000000-fb7fe000, maxmem 33ffe000
    Memory: 120088k/139264k available (1907k kernel code, 10828k reserved, 723k data, 188k init, 0k highmem)
    Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
    calibrate_delay_direct() failed to get a good estimate for loops_per_jiffy.
    Probably due to long platform interrupts. Consider using "lpj=" boot option.
    Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
    Capability LSM initialized
    Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
    CPU: L1 I cache: 32K, L1 D cache: 32K
    CPU: L3 cache: 4096K
    Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
    Brought up 1 CPUs
    migration_cost=0
    checking if image is initramfs... it is
    Freeing initrd memory: 4946k freed
    Grant table initialized
    NET: Registered protocol family 16
    Brought up 1 CPUs
    PCI: setting up Xen PCI frontend stub
    ACPI: Subsystem revision 20060127
    ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
    Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
    pnp: PnP ACPI: disabled
    xen_mem: Initialising balloon driver.
    PCI: System does not support PCI
    PCI: System does not support PCI
    IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.14-xen <tigran@veritas.com>
    audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
    audit(1168881254.190:1): initialized
    VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
    Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
    Initializing Cryptographic API
    io scheduler noop registered
    io scheduler anticipatory registered
    io scheduler deadline registered
    io scheduler cfq registered (default)
    PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.
    i8042.c: No controller found.
    Floppy drive(s): fd0 is unknown type 15 (usb?), fd1 is unknown type 15 (usb?)
    Failed to obtain physical IRQ 6
    floppy0: no floppy controllers found
    RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
    loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
    Xen virtual console successfully installed as tty1
    Event-channel device installed.
    netfront: Initialising virtual ethernet driver.
    Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
    ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
    mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
    md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
    md: bitmap version 4.39
    NET: Registered protocol family 2
    Registering block device major 8
    blkfront: sda1: barriers enabled
    blkfront: sda2: barriers enabled
    -->PARALLELS CRASHED<--
     
  16. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

    Messages:
    17
    Another log.
    This is with RAMDISK disabled on Xen DomU config

    root@localhost ~]# xm create -c fc3
    Using config file "/etc/xen/fc3".
    Started domain fc3
    Linux version 2.6.16.33-xen (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 4.1.1 20061011 (Red Hat 4.1.1-30)) #3 SMP Mon Jan 15 17:34:37 CET 2007
    BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
    Xen: 0000000000000000 - 0000000008800000 (usable)
    0MB HIGHMEM available.
    136MB LOWMEM available.
    ACPI in unprivileged domain disabled
    Built 1 zonelists
    Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda1 ro
    Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
    Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
    Initializing CPU#0
    PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 10, 16384 bytes)
    Xen reported: 1144.339 MHz processor.
    Console: colour dummy device 80x25
    Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
    Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
    Software IO TLB disabled
    vmalloc area: c9000000-fb7fe000, maxmem 33ffe000
    Memory: 125052k/139264k available (1907k kernel code, 5880k reserved, 723k data, 188k init, 0k highmem)
    Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
    Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 4905.47 BogoMIPS (lpj=24527384)
    Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
    Capability LSM initialized
    Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
    CPU: L1 I cache: 32K, L1 D cache: 32K
    CPU: L3 cache: 4096K
    Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
    Brought up 1 CPUs
    migration_cost=0
    Grant table initialized
    NET: Registered protocol family 16
    Brought up 1 CPUs
    PCI: setting up Xen PCI frontend stub
    ACPI: Subsystem revision 20060127
    ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
    Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
    pnp: PnP ACPI: disabled
    xen_mem: Initialising balloon driver.
    PCI: System does not support PCI
    PCI: System does not support PCI
    IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.14-xen <tigran@veritas.com>
    audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
    audit(1168881474.795:1): initialized
    VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
    Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
    Initializing Cryptographic API
    io scheduler noop registered
    io scheduler anticipatory registered
    io scheduler deadline registered
    io scheduler cfq registered (default)
    PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.
    i8042.c: No controller found.
    Floppy drive(s): fd0 is unknown type 15 (usb?), fd1 is unknown type 15 (usb?)
    Failed to obtain physical IRQ 6
    floppy0: no floppy controllers found
    RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
    loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
    Xen virtual console successfully installed as tty1
    Event-channel device installed.
    netfront: Initialising virtual ethernet driver.
    Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
    ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
    mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
    md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
    md: bitmap version 4.39
    NET: Registered protocol family 2
    Registering block device major 8
    blkfront: sda2: barriers enabled
    blkfront: sda1: barriers enabled
    IP route cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
    TCP established hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
    TCP bind hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
    TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192)
    TCP reno registered
    NET: Registered protocol family 1
    NET: Registered protocol family 17
    Using IPI No-Shortcut mode
    md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
    md: autorun ...
    md: ... autorun DONE.
    EXT2-fs warning (device sda1): ext2_fill_super: mounting ext3 filesystem as ext2
    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
    Freeing unused kernel memory: 188k freed
    modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.16.33-xen/modules.dep: No such file or directory

    INIT: version 2.85 booting
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty1: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty2: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty3: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty4: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty5: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 80: /dev/tty6: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 84: /dev/tty7: Read-only file system
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 85: /dev/tty8: Read-only file system
    Welcome to Fedora Core
    Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
    Starting udev: [ OK ]
    Initializing hardware... storage
    -->PARALLELS CRASHED<--

    It seems that's something related to storage driver/access.
     
  17. andreground

    andreground Junior Member

    Messages:
    17
    Same problem with Xen 3.0.3-0.
     

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