Xen inside Parallels Desktop for Mac

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.
 
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.
 
Emulators that use hardware support won't ever run under other emulators. Wait for the Mac version.
 
...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).
 
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.
 
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.
 
As of build 3120, Xen (3.0.2) once again successfully boots, and is able to launch guest domains. Woohoo -- thanks parallels team!
 
???

dylanjames said:
As of build 3120, Xen (3.0.2) once again successfully boots, and is able to launch guest domains. Woohoo -- thanks parallels team!
Click to expand...

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!
 
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!
 
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:
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<--
 
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.
 
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