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HOWTO: Windows XP running under Xen 3.0 on Ubuntu Dapper Drake
Posted by
Joel (joelh-website at planetjoel dot com)
on Friday, 30th of June, 2006 - 11:46:05 PM
Introduction Xen is new virtualization technology that is just starting to become very big mostly thanks to its speed and ease of use on linux compared to similar products. We use it on some production servers and although the product is still young and unstable its still very usable and is getting much better with every release. VT is new virtualization technology supported by most Intel Dual Core processors that enables virtual applications to be run through a new instruction set. Xen normally requires that you have a modified guest OS that is aware it is a virtual host and can communicate with the physical host (called the Dom0 for Domain-0) however if you have a VT enabled chipset then Xen can launch unmodified processes such as Windows. This article explains how to get windows going under Xen. Windows on Xen is still very new and so there is currently very little documentation about it. I haven't tested the stability that heavily because my laptop has a tendency to restart while running Xen. The console itself is far too slow to use directly probably because Xen was never meant to be used as Desktop virtualization software so I tend to connect over rdesktop. Will I continue using this on my laptop? No. Xen doesn't yet support ACPI very well and I don't think it works with the nvidia binary drivers. I think Xen windows is really useful in server environments with people using RDP. No more sharing the same RDP machine and fighting over it all day, give each person a VM! Hopefully you can get cheap licenses somehow ;-). If your interested in getting Windows going on linux you should also check out:
Howto You will need a VT enabled processor to get this to work. Intel Dual Cores and Intel Xeons all support this. AMD A2's are supposed to be compatible but I don't know whether they are supported yet. Google your processor to find out whether its supported. First thing you will want to do is follow the guide at HowtoForge.com for installing Xen on Dapper Drake. I installed Xen 3.0.2 instead of 3.0.1 but the guide was mostly spot on and unfortunately you still need to do all the workarounds mentioned in the guide. You then need to ensure that VT support is enabled for your system. With my vaio laptop I didn't need to do anything - you may need to go into the bios and enable this feature. Once booted into Xen check that VT support is enabled for Xen.
$ xm dmesg | grep VMX
If you do not see a VMXON message then Xen has not detected that VT support and you will not be able to install Windows. Check that your processor does indeed support VT and that it is enabled.(XEN) VMXON is done (XEN) VMXON is done Make an image for your XP installation. You probably want to keep it fairly small and keep most of your files on the network or internet. This will take a few moments while it fills up the disk. 4096 is the number of megabytes so mine is 4 gigs, pick an appropriate size for your needs.
$ mkdir -p /var/xen/images/
Edit the file /etc/xen/winxp and set up something similar to this config. You may want to increase the amount of memory. Also make sure that your cdrom line points to your cdrom device (and not the /dev/cdrom symlink that doesn't appear to work). Note boot='d' means boot off the cd-rom drive, once Windows is installed you change this to boot='c'.
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/xen/images/WinXP.img bs=1M count=4096
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
Start up the VM and cross your fingers.builder = 'hvm' memory = 512 name = "winxp" vcpus = 1 vif = [ 'type=ioemu, bridge=xenbr0' ] disk = [ 'file:/var/xen/images/WinXP.img,ioemu:hda,w' ] device_model = '/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-dm' cdrom='/dev/hda' ne2000=0 boot='d'
xm create winxp
Here are some screenshots of it in action:
If you run into any problems here check out /var/log/xend.log to see what the problem is. One problem that I ran into was the "Integer expected" problem. I uncommented lines one by one until I found the offending line and fixed it up. A window will appear now and the Windows installation process will begin. Then you can simply install Windows as you normally would. Here are some screenshots:
License Agreement
Weeeee installing
A problem I experienced installing the network drivers. I just ignored this and restarted. Didn't see any problems because of it.
Windows Desktop
Connecting via rdesktop Add a comment
Comments
All comments owned by their poster. Name: sherman I take it that people who have Mobile Centrino chips (like used in the Dell Inspiron 9300) will be left out and cannot use Xen? I was very tempted to do this... I am sick of having a wasted 20gb partition 'dedicated' to xp... Name: Eric the Red "I haven't tested the stability that heavily because my laptop has a tendency to restart while running Xen." Name: Chris Followed the install on the HowtoForge.com site, then folowed these instructions. Name: Joel Did you install Xen 3.0.2 ? I'm not sure whether its in 3.0.1 . If it hasn't been installed correctly the file is in the unpacked install directory in install/usr/lib/xen/boot/hbmloader . Name: Bill I don't use Xen but VM server does a great job of this. Check for tutorials on the Ubuntu forums. I,m using the Vista beta but XP should work fine as well. Name: d0nk3y OT but it appears you use a Vaio. Name: aenertia Okay, big question, can you use an existing windows install. My partner is in Singapore and lo and behold new laptops don't come with instalation media. She has a dell xps 1210 running dapper, and I want to install xen for her... but the big question which I have not seen answered in any of the VT + XP + Xen tutorials floating around is if you can DD or just use an existing windows partition to a) create an image to use or b) access directly. Name: bubbaganoush I've got it running with xen 3.0.3 but the mouse doesn't work right. Name: asian handjob {links:20 Name: Adam Any idea how to start the Windows domain headless (or if this is even possible with Xen)? It doesn't seem to be able to live without the "HVMXEN" window. Name: powerade1 Really nicest Name: Stuart This example seems to focus on a new install of windows XP. I would like to do this sort of thing with an _existing windows XP install. Is this possible with Xen? Do these instructions also apply in this case? Name: kolaloka Well, I fancy Xen, but for ordinary people (I am not one of them) VirtualBOX is the thing for virtualizing windows on linux. Googlefor it, it is free and opensource. Good luck. Name: AHZ Name: AHZ Name: dkzxy Nice site. Name: asef I really wanted to like Xen but just how darned hard do they want to make it on you to get it working with Ubuntu. Gotta love the copious amounts of documentation too. Plus I'm reading that people are having mouse problems, etc. etc. Name: Vince asdef, Name: vasil Name: Dov """Time is the sacrifice that the community has to pay to guarantee its freedom.""" Name: Hi zrya ti tak Name: Warren Thanks for the guide, it was a good start to add a xp domU: my sys details + cfg as follows for anyone as a guide too. The bellow worked smooth, no issues to date, just initial cfg setups. Name: smoochie mmmm yay for this guide I use xp to run autocad this allows me to run it in a ubuntu environment since wine doesn't work very well yet. thanks for the help! |
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