On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:55:20PM +0200, Roman Ammann wrote:

I read on the list that other people tried to install libvirt on Debian Etch. I finally succeeded so I'll post a little Howto. Maybe someone with a better understanding of automake and C stuff knows a nicer way but the ugly folder with the links to the different header files.

The start point is a Debian Etch with a running Xen (in my case it's the xen-hypervisor-3.0.3-1-i386-pae package). If you're not using the PAE version of the xen-hypervisor change the "apt-get source" line accordingly.

First you will need to install a bunch of development packages

apt-get install build-essential libxml2-dev libncurses5-dev apt-get isntall libreadline5-dev python-dev

Go to your home directory and install the Xen hypervisor sources

cd apt-get source xen-hypervisor-3.0.3-1-i386-pae

Create a folder with a bunch of symbolic links. We will use this folder libvirt to find the header files.

mkdir libvirt-include cd libvirt-include/ ln -s /root/xen-3.0-3.0.3-0/xen/include/public/xen.h ln -s /root/xen-3.0-3.0.3-0/tools/xenstore/xs.h ln -s /root/xen-3.0-3.0.3-0/tools/xenstore/xs_lib.h ln -s /root/xen-3.0-3.0.3-0/xen/include/public xen ln -s /root/xen-3.0-3.0.3-0/linux-2.6-xen-sparse/include/xen/public/ xen/linux

Configure the dynamic linker that it will be able to find the libxenstore library

echo '/usr/lib/xen-3.0.3-1/lib' > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/i486-linux-gnu.conf ldconfig

Hum, this really is the installation of Xen, hopefully you should be able to download prepackaged version, including the development part to avoid this, but I have no experience with Debian myself.

Go to your home directory, download an extract the libvirt source package

cd wget http://libvirt.org/sources/libvirt-0.2.3.tar.gz tar xvfz libvirt-0.2.3.tar.gz cd libvirt-0.2.3

Configure, build and install the libvirt

That is the standard process, but again using prepackaged versions would be nicer. Also note that theorically libvirt should now be able to compile and work without Xen support assuming QEmu (and possibly KVM support in recent kernel versions).

CFLAGS="-fno-stack-protector -I/root/libvirt-include -L/usr/lib/xen-3.0.3-1/lib" ./configure --with-xen --without-qemu make make install

Enable the Unix socket server for xend. Edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and change the line

#(xend-unix-server no)

to

(xend-unix-server yes)

I would also make sure the http server is desactivated this is a giant security hole: #(xend-http-server no)

Restart your Xen-Daemon

/etc/init.d/xend restart

If everything work you should see your running virtual machines when you enter

virsh list

Ideally we should find prepackaged version for most common OS, coming with the OS or from trusted sources. I'm fine pointing to such repositories, and providing instructions on how to install in the FAQ. And if the problem is storage, I'm fine hosting packages on libvirt.org itself, I just need a person willing to maintain the package for one year at least (i.e. providing updates). And as usual if there is portability problems and/or fixes, send them to the list, I'm eager to get libvirt on new platform, new oses, and new virtualization engines ! For example I'm wondering about -fno-stack-protector passed before, why is that needed ? Daniel -- Red Hat Virtualization group http://redhat.com/virtualization/ Daniel Veillard | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/ veillard@redhat.com | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/