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Date:      Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:22:32 +0100
From:      Witold Baryluk <baryluk@smp.if.uj.edu.pl>
To:        freebsd-xen@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Is there any prebuild 9.0 PV i386 kernel image?
Message-ID:  <20120131172232.GE12978@smp.if.uj.edu.pl>

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Hi,

I wanted to install FreeBSD 9.0 on my machine with xen 4.1 (Debian testing)
on i386 hardware. However only thing I found is a this files:

Index of /pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/i386/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
Name	Size	Date Modified
[parent directory]		
CHECKSUM.MD5	309 B	1/7/12 12:44:00 AM
CHECKSUM.SHA256	449 B	1/7/12 12:46:00 AM
FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso	128 MB	1/3/12 8:51:00 AM
FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	502 MB	1/3/12 8:50:00 AM
FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso	2.1 GB	1/7/12 12:41:00 AM
FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img	535 MB	1/3/12 8:51:00 AM

There is kernel.txz archive also, but it just contains single binary
kernel image. There is probably also sources easly available, but I do
not think it is possible to cross-compile easly FreeBSD on Linux like
netbsd, isn't it? Anyway it is unacasarly complicated. NetBSD or many
Linux distros (like Debian), provides kernel/initrd for
installation/running just in Xen PV, to make it easier.

I found a one kernel in Debian:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/kfreebsd-image-9.0-1-xen

it actually can be installed as package on Linux i386,
and easly used for Xen!

It booted for me without much problem:


movax-dev:/etc/xen# cat kfreebsd9.cfg
name = "kfreebsd9"
kernel = "/boot/kfreebsd-9.0-1-xen.gz"
memory = 256


movax-dev:/etc/xen# xl create  kfreebsd9.cfg -c
Parsing config file kfreebsd9.cfg
xc: error: panic: xc_dom_bzimageloader.c:556: xc_dom_probe_bzimage_kernel: kernel is not a bzImage: Invalid kernel
Daemon running with PID 10546
WARNING: loader(8) metadata is missing!
GDB: no debug ports present
KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
Copyright (c) 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
#0 Sat Jan  7 14:06:17 UTC 2012 i386
Xen reported: 2793.110 MHz processor.
Timecounter "ixen" frequency 1953125 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2793.11-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf41  Family = f  Model = 4  Stepping = 1
  Features=0xbfe3fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x441d<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,CNXT-ID,xTPR>
  AMD Features=0x100000<NX>
real memory  = 268435456 (256 MB)
avail memory = 254488576 (242 MB)
[XEN] IPI cpu=0 irq=128 vector=RESCHEDULE_VECTOR (0)
[XEN] IPI cpu=0 irq=129 vector=CALL_FUNCTION_VECTOR (1)
xenstore0: <XenStore> on motherboard
[XEN] xen_rtc_probe: probing Hypervisor RTC clock
rtc0: <Xen Hypervisor Clock> on motherboard
[XEN] xen_rtc_attach: attaching Hypervisor RTC clock
xc0: <Xen Console> on motherboard
Event timer "ixen" quality 600
Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
xenbusb_back0: <Xen Backend Devices> on xenstor[XEN] hypervisor wallclock nudged; nudging TOD.
e0
xctrl0: <Xen Control Device> on xenstore0
xenbusb_front0: <Xen Frontend Devices> on xenstore0
xenbusb_add_device: Device device/suspend/event-channel ignored. State 6
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 2793110000 Hz quality 800

Loader variables:

Manual root filesystem specification:
  <fstype>:<device> [options]
      Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
      and with the specified (optional) option list.

    eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
        zfs:tank
        cd9660:/dev/acd0 ro
          (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/acd0 /)

  ?               List valid disk boot devices
  .               Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
  <empty line>    Abort manual input

mountroot> 
panic: mountroot: unable to (re-)mount root.
cpuid = 0
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 1 tid 100002 ]
Stopped at      kdb_enter+0x38: movl    $0,kdb_why
db> halt
movax-dev:/etc/xen#


In fact after some more work, I was even able to boot it, and run installer,
with Debian's kfreebsd kernel image, and *-dvd1.iso image as sdb,
with additional extra = "vfs.root.mountfrom=cd9660:/dev/da1"! :)
Installation over serial console works (I selected 'xterm' terminal,
and everythings looks to be workking nicly, with colors and arrow keys).

Only technical problem so far is that I sometimes get:

   "[XEN] hypervisor wallclock nudged; nudging TOD."

from kernel. It looks same message like reported by Colin:

   http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-xen/2010-November/000613.html

however I cannot find any solution to it.




I still miss upstream binary image for exactly same purpose (because
kfreebsd != FreeBSD, and other distributions which uses Xen could also
benefit by upstream suplied images), and better documentation in
handbook (there is literaly zero informations about Xen or serial
console installation in handbook)



-- 
Witold Baryluk
JID: witold.baryluk // jabster.pl



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