How to Install Xen 3.3.1 on Debian Lenny

Installing Xen 3.3.1 on Debian Lenny is not a complicated task.

1. The Xen environment depends on the following packages (deb’s), so We need to install the first, You can do it with your favorite package manager, I use apt-get:

bcc bin86 gawk bridge-utils iproute libcurl3 libcurl4-openssl-dev bzip2 module-init-tools transfig tgif texinfo
pciutils-dev mercurial build-essential make gcc libc6-dev zlib1g-dev python python-dev python-twisted libncurses5-dev patch libvncserver-dev libsdl-dev libjpeg62-dev

2. Now lets download Xen source package from Xen.org website.

wget http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.3.1/xen-3.3.1.tar.gz

3. Once download is completed, we need to gunzip and extract the file.

tar -xzf xen-3.3.1.tar.gz

4. Now let’s cd into the extracted directory and start the fun

cd xen-3.3.1
make world && make dist
And now run the install script
./install.sh

5. Create the start up scripts.

update-rc.d xend defaults 20 21
update-rc.d xendomains defaults 21 20

6. Next we need to create a new initrd file for the new Kernel.

depmod 2.6.18.8-xen
update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.18.8-xen

7. All that left to do is update the boot loader and reboot into the new Xen environment.

update-grub && reboot