[NBLUG/talk] Trying to use XEN in Fedora 7

[Andrew]

Jack Smith wrote on Sun, 1 Jul 2007 16:47:47 -0400:

> I've upgraded to Fedora 7, installed Xen, booted into the Xen
> kernel, started the Xen manager, and oops, I can't install my
> Windows O/S from disk.
[snip]
> So, what is an installation tree and how do I set one up?  I
> at least know what an NFS share is and have used it in
> Solaris, though not Linux.
[snip]

Sounds like the thing to do is mount your Windows install CD and
export that.

I have neither the time nor the knowledge of Fedora to give you
specifics of how to do it in that distro, but here are some
general tips:

First, check to see if Fedora provides some kind of neat-looking
GUI tool to set up NFS exports. If there is such a thing and it's
not really horribly designed, be happy. Use it to export the
directory under which the CD (or DVD) gets mounted. (For
example, /media/cdrom/ ).

Failing that, go to the Linux NFS site at SourceForge. (Google
for "Linux NFS".) Read the excellent HOWTO. It'll explain how to
manually set up an NFS share.

Once you have the CD-ROM/DVD mounted and have exported it via
NFS, go back to Xen. Mount the NFS share and dig around in it to
find the Windows installer program (probably something like
"setup.exe"). Start it manually and cross your fingers.

By the way, you should be able to do all this on one machine.
There shouldn't be any need to export the install disk from a
completely separate box. Just use 127.0.0.1 or "localhost" for
the export.

One other thing: if you're installing Vista, read the EULA very
carefully. Some versions of Vista expressly forbid installing it
in a virtual environment. There is probably no *technical* reason
that prevents it from running in a virtual environment; M$ is
just trying to force you to upgrade to a more expensive version
with a more permissive EULA.

Good luck.

A.