Howto Install Windows XP / Vista on Xen

This short guide describes how to install Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server on . It provides an overview of the installation, and detailed steps for installing and configuring and starting the Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server
installation.

Requirements

• CPU with either Intel’s Vanderpool () or
• Windows iso-image

First you need to install on Etch:

sudo apt-get install xen-linux-system-2.6.18-4-xen-686 libc6-xen bridge-utils

Boot into the newly installed Xen enabled Linux kernel

sudo reboot

Then adjusted the network settings in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp. Enabling the network bridge:

(network-script network-bridge)

Install Xen IO Emulation tools:

sudo apt-get install xen-ioemu-3.0.3-1

Create a directory for the virtual machine files e.g. /home/xen/domains/win01 and create a disk image for the virtual machine’s primary disk.

mkdir /home/xen
mkdir /home/xen/domains
mkdir /home/xen/domains/win01
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of= /home/xen/domains/win01/disk.img bs=1M count=4096

Establish a Xen machine Configuration file (/etc/xen/win01.cfg) like this

kernel = '/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader'
builder = 'hvm'
memory = '256'
device_model='/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-dm'

# Disks
disk = [ 'file:/home/xen/domains/win01/disk.img,ioemu:hda,w',
'file:/home/cc/iso-images/WindowsXP-SP2/image.iso,ioemu:hdc:cdrom,r' ]

# Hostname
name = 'win01'

# Networking
vif = ['type=ioemu, bridge=xenbr0']

# Behaviour
boot='d'
vnc=1
vncviewer=1
sdl=0

The ready to fire up the new machine and start the Windows installation in a vnc terminal.

xm create win01.cfg

After the virtual machine is started – a VNC server port should be available on port 5900 at the Xen server’s IP, e.g. 192.168.1.102 – A VNC XEN Client session is depicted here.

If an error like this shows up

Error: Device 0 (vif) could not be connected. Backend device not found.

You should check your that you have enabled the network bridge, “(network-script network-bridge)”, in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and restarted the xen deamon by /etc/init.d/xend restart

For more on creating Xen virtual machines read , which outlines the features of the xen-tools package.