HowTo Create a FreeBSD 8 i386 Xen PV domU

Hi,
I’m currnetlly working on a large virtual environment which will run many types of operating systems. After some research, I found this Thread in the FreeBSD Forum, which deals with the installation of FreeBSD DomU on a Debian Dom0.

From the post:

The goal of this guide is to show you how to create a FreeBSD 8 installation that will run as a guest OS, without the need for a processor that supports hardware-assisted virtualization. It would go beyond the scope of this guide to explain how exactly Xen works or what the differences between PV and HVM are, suffice to say dom0 is the host OS and domU the guest OS. Although FreeBSD fully supports being a Xen domU, it is not yet very well documented and not suited for novice Xen users. Especially the lack of a Xen-aware installer or pre-built Xen-aware images make things more difficult. If you are a Xen novice, I recommend starting first with pre-built Linux images, and then trying a NetBSD domU installation, before proceeding with FreeBSD.

Hope you’ll find it useful.

Debian Lenny - clocksource/0: Time went backwards

After rebooting one of the Dom0 at my site, all the guests came up with annoying message ‘clocksource/0: Time went backwards’.
After doing some search I found the following solution at Debian Wiki:

If a domU crashes or freezes while uttering the famous lasts words ‘clocksource/0: Time went backwards’, your domU is likely using the xen clocksource instead of its own clock ticks. In practice, this seems to be the cause of infrequent lockups under load (and/or problems with suspending). A workaround is to decouple the clock in the domU from the dom0:

In your dom0 and domU /etc/sysctl.conf add the line:
xen.independent_wallclock=1
On the dom0, edit the configuration file of the domU (e.g. /etc/xen/foobar.cfg and add (or expand) the extra-line:
extra=”clocksource=jiffies”.

These settings can be activated without rebooting the domU. After editing the configuration files, issue
sysctl -p and echo “jiffies”> /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/current_clocksource on the domU prompt.

Because the clock won’t be relying on the dom0 clock anymore, you probably need to use ntp on the domU to synchronize it properly to the world.

PCI Express x16 VGA Pass through to Xen-based Windows XP Home HVM Virtual Machine I have made and uploaded a two-part video series on VGA pass

Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) has published a post on his blog which discuss about
PCI Express VGA Pass through to xen Windows XP HVM Guest.

From the post:

Basically Windows XP guest operating system has direct access to PCI Express x16 graphics card but in a reduced functionality state. The videos show that the passed through display card cannot found enough resources it can use. The device status for nVidia Geforce 8400 GS on my Intel Desktop Board DQ45CB is:

This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12)

He has published 2 videos on Youtube with an examples.

Part 1:

Part 2: