What kind of zeroshell image is Xen looking for?

[flw2]

Greetings all,
I’m running CentOS 5.3 with Xen virtualization capabilities. When I attempt to create a new (Paravirtualized) virtual machine for zeroshell, I get the error:

Unable to complete install: ‘Could not find an installable distribution at ‘/mnt/ZeroShell-1.0.beta11.iso”

I’ve tried both the ISO image and the CF image
ZeroShell-1.0.beta11-CompactFlash-IDE-USB-SATA-1GB.img

Both return the same error message. I saw in another thread that Fulvio built ZS B10 for the Xen environment (search on Xen to find it – I don’t know how to do links here yet).

Questions:
– Did Beta 10 have Xen compatibility, and it was removed in B11?
– Should I be trying a different sort of image besides ISO or IMG? Which one?
– Is the Paravirtualization the issue (apparently my hardware will not support full virtualization).

As a side note, the B11 CompactFlash download seems to just be an IMG file, even though it sports a GZ extension. None of the zip programs liked it, and the “file” command says it’s an img file (regardless of extension).

DEEP BACKGROUND – these are the details of the error message:
Unable to complete install ‘exceptions.ValueError Could not find an installable distribution at ‘/mnt/ZeroShell-1.0.beta11.iso’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/create.py”, line 627, in do_install
dom = guest.start_install(False, meter = meter)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/Guest.py”, line 820, in start_install
self._prepare_install(meter)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/ParaVirtGuest.py”, line 56, in _prepare_install
self._installer.prepare(guest = self, meter = meter)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/DistroManager.py”, line 261, in prepare
self._prepare_kernel_and_initrd(guest, distro, meter)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/DistroManager.py”, line 231, in _prepare_kernel_and_initrd
arch = arch)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/DistroManager.py”, line 133, in acquireKernel
arch=arch)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/DistroManager.py”, line 109, in _storeForDistro
raise ValueError, _(“Could not find an installable distribution at ‘%s'” % baseuri)
ValueError: Could not find an installable distribution at ‘/mnt/ZeroShell-1.0.beta11.iso’
‘

[j2fet]

http://www.diegor.it/blog/2009/01/30/howto-zeroshell-su-xen/

[flw2]

Thanks j2fet —

I tried your config file, and it complained that my processor doesn’t support full virtualization.

Does ZeroShell require full virtualization to function in a VM?

[abale]

flw2 – figured I’d reply…

I’m definitely not an expert on this, but I’ve been trolling forums on Xen for a bit.

For paravitualization to work, Zeroshell needs the DomU Xen kernel to be running. Otherwise, it would have to be fully virtualized.

This would mean one of the newer Intel or AMD processors with ‘hardware virtualization support’ enabled in the BIOS.

None of the images I see posted here appear to be built for Xen paravirtualization.

[flw2]

Thanks abale. I’ve got a friend with the right kind of processor, so we are going to fool with his machine and see if we can get it working correctly. I’ll update this thread when I figure it out.

/flw

[flw2]

UPDATE:
We have successfully run Zeroshell on VMware in paravirtualized mode (the chipset in the computer did not support any type of virtualization).

With the caveat that we have not actually done any configurations or attempted to use Zeroshell as a network device, apparently Zeroshell does function under paravirtualization.

[giancagianca]

vmware (for machine with no hardware virtualization) support bynary translation of guest operation system. Also windows works on vmware.

Bye.

[abale]

You might be able to tell I don’t come here very often…

I have run Zeroshell in both VMWare (server on Windows and ESXi), and also in Virtualbox (windows and solaris). It works just fine.

To get Xen to work, you need the Paravirtualization support, which means a proc with Virtualization extensions. Then you should be able to run it fine there, as well.

This should technically also mean that it will run on any other of the full virtualization software packages. The question is performance without being able to install the guest extensions. The VM performance will suffer a little, but Zeroshell does not have that high of requirements, so any modern machine will handle it well even under full virtualization without processor support.

[spitz]

@abale wrote:

You might be able to tell I don’t come here very often…

I have run Zeroshell in both VMWare (server on Windows and ESXi), and also in Virtualbox (windows and solaris). It works just fine.

To get Xen to work, you need the Paravirtualization support, which means a proc with Virtualization extensions. Then you should be able to run it fine there, as well.

This should technically also mean that it will run on any other of the full virtualization software packages. The question is performance without being able to install the guest extensions. The VM performance will suffer a little, but Zeroshell does not have that high of requirements, so any modern machine will handle it well even under full virtualization without processor support.

What kind of hardware do I need for ESXi ?
I tried the 3.5 and 4.0 versions on a Pentium D but I got a message my hardware is not supported 🙁

Is there any tutorial how to install zeroshell on a virtualbox ?

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