Installing a test scripts server on XVM ======================================= It's useful to have a less secure scripts server for testing purposes. Here's what you have to do: 1. Creating the VM ------------------ To authenticate to xvm.mit.edu with root tickets, you need a browser that suppors SPNEGO; Firefox is one such browser and the following instructions will assume it. Browse to about:config and modify the key 'network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris' to be https://xvm.mit.edu:442/* Then, with active root tickets on your system, navigate to https://xvm.mit.edu:442/ You should be logged in as root, and if you are on scripts-root you should be able to assign ownership to scripts. [XXX: there should be a way to do this with remctl too] 2. Configure ------------ Lest you be tempted to skimp on RAM: you must have more than 700MBish to install Fedora; 1024MB is a good amount is a good amount to give to the server. Disk space on order of 40G is probably good enough. While it is best to use the install CD from the most recent version of Fedora, any kernel which supports Kickstarting can be used. A good bet is to use the Netboot CD from the latest version of Fedora that XVM has (since XVM is sort of bad about keeping their boot CDs up to date.) Since you're doing an install CD, it's going to be an HVM. You will need VNC access to perform the installation process. If you have Java, just go to the Console page for the VM; if you do not, you can use the following set of incants to setup a local VNC server which can talk to the console: athrun xvm invirt-vnc-client -a $AUTHTOKEN vncviewer localhost where AUTHTOKEN is the contents of the AUTHTOKEN param on the console page (which would have had the Java applet.) On the bootloader screen (usually it gives you a bunch of options such as "Install" or "Advanced"), press TAB and edit the kernel boot line to append the text: ks=http://ezyang.scripts.mit.edu/kickstart/scripts.php?type=xvm&release=$RELEASE_NO&hostname=scripts-f$RELEASE_NO-test.xvm.mit.edu with $RELEASE_NO interpolated properly. You should keep around any initrd lines since the kernel image still needs to know how to boot up. XXX the kickstart file needs to live in a less sketchy place The install process will ask you for a password. Do NOT use the scripts-root password. We have a password in /mit/scripts/Private/scripts-test-passwd which we tend to use. We don't know how to convert to ParaVM yet, because latest Fedora uses Grub2 but XVM's bootloader doesn't understand how to read it (see also the Scripts patches we manually applied to our hosts.) 3. Debugging ------------ Get dropped into dracut:#/ ? Check for 'Warn' in dmesg (dmesg | grep Warn) and fix any problems that are stopping Dracut from proceeding.