On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 04:50:54PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote: Are you aware of the Ubuntu mainline kernel builds? http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ Could be useful to identify a working kernel. Cheers, Al.

Hi All, On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 16:50, Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote: This describes my experience moving from ubuntu 8.04 LTS (hardy) to 9.10 by first upgrading to the stock kernel.org 2.6.32 manually. Be warned this happened two weeks ago so I may be leaving important details out. If you do something like this please proceed with caution and have backups! This also presumes you have a kernel that has the disks accessible from /dev/xvdaX, earlier kernels might be using something different? Generally speaking I used this guide with make-kpkg https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile#AltBuildMethod I retained my old configuration as much as possible choosing defaults, selecting everything related to xen, that is to say at minimum: CONFIG_XEN=y CONFIG_XEN_MAX_DOMAIN_MEMORY=8 CONFIG_XEN_SAVE_RESTORE=y CONFIG_XEN_BLKDEV_FRONTEND=y CONFIG_NETXEN_NIC=m CONFIG_XEN_NETDEV_FRONTEND=y CONFIG_HVC_XEN=y CONFIG_XEN_BALLOON=y CONFIG_XEN_SCRUB_PAGES=y CONFIG_XEN_DEV_EVTCHN=y CONFIG_XENFS=y CONFIG_XEN_COMPAT_XENFS=y CONFIG_XEN_SYS_HYPERVISOR=y It is also essential to include the ext4 driver in the kernel and not as a module so: CONFIG_EXT4_FS=y CONFIG_EXT4_FS_XATTR=y CONFIG_EXT4_FS_POSIX_ACL=y CONFIG_EXT4_FS_SECURITY=y # CONFIG_EXT4_DEBUG is not set Setting compression of the kernel to anything other than GZ will probably fail with pygrub (I tried LZMA) so: CONFIG_KERNEL_GZIP=y # CONFIG_KERNEL_BZIP2 is not set # CONFIG_KERNEL_LZMA is not set However because of the deprecation of the arch/xen there are some extra details to follow: 1. ARCH=i386 has to be set 2. Given it is a "cross" arch build I couldn't get the --initrd flag to work properly so: ARCH=i386 fakeroot make-kpkg --append-to-version=-xen kernel-image kernel-headers Even with the arch set I ended up with linux-xenu-2.6.32-xen as the package name, make-kpkg seems to read info from the currently running system. Install the resulting packages with dpkg. Now to the configuration of the system: 1. hvc0 must be set up as with getty add on a single line "hvc0" to /etc/securetty 2. ubuntu 8.04 needs a hvc0 file in /etc/event.d [we'll get to 9.10 in due course] copy tty1 to hvc0 and rename all occurrences of tty1 to hvc0 3. presuming pygrub all round? anyway modify /boot/grub/menu.lst to contain as first/boot entry (leave your old kernel inplace!): title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.32-xen root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-xen root=/dev/xvda1 xencons=hvc0 4. Seen as we don't have an initrd, uuid's are out, so modify /etc/fstab to /dev/xvda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1 /dev/xvda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 5. Login to console.*.bitfolk.co.uk and try a reboot, if it goes wrong 6. If it works do-release-upgrade's config needs to be updated to look at non-lts releases, so set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades. Then a few passes are required, don't reboot between upgrades, different things may break! 7. Copy /etc/init/tty1.conf to /etc/init.d/hvc0.conf and replace tty1 with hvc0, /etc/event.d is no longer used in 9.10. 8. Reboot again from the console. Finally as gcc went from 4.1.x to 4.4.1, after successfully upgrading to 9.10, I did a another build with the same configuration. This time an initrd could be built, so I guess a uuid/initrd booting config could be restored. However all I did was change from ext3 to ext4 in fstab. Don't enable extents or anything ext4-only given pygrub still needs to be able to access your /boot folder! At least delayed allocation is free :) Best of luck! If any more details are needed, please drop me an email! -- David Connolly

Hi David, On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 06:20:08PM +0000, David Connolly wrote: I finally got around to having a quick look at this the other day. Where did you get your kernel source from? I downloaded source from kernel.org and it had no CONFIG_XEN* options in it. But that guide is for recompiling the distribution's current kernel from the distribution's source package, right? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "I'd be happy to buy all variations of sex to ensure I got what I wanted." -- Gary Coates (talking about cabling)

Hi David, On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 01:07:54PM +0000, David Connolly wrote: Thanks for the clue. Looking at my version it actually also depends on X86_TSC, and I was being conservative and using a CPU arch of 486/586/686 which doesn't provide that. It needs to be at least PPro. I seem to now have a kernel that Debian testing is happy with and it's also got around this udev unpleasantness, so I'll keep it running for a bit and see if it's still OK. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting <Ging> i stopped taking my medication long ago. the ironey is it was for social anxioty disorder and now i daren't go back to the doctor to get another perscription