Server Dell PowerEdge T410

Manuals

• here, online version of the main manual here with chapter on LED status here

Install notes

BIOS

• • Activate Virtualization support
  • Power Management -> OS Control
  • Report kbd errors: NO

Debian Squeeze

Still testing at time of writing but frozen so almost stable ;-)

• Installing squeeze from daily image (17/08/2010)
  • Complains about missing bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-5.0.0.j3.fw & bnx2/bnx2-rv2p-09-5.0.0.j3.fw
    • Get it on another machine and put it on USB stick: aptitude install firmware-bnx2 ; cp /lib/firmware/bnx2/bnx2-*-09-5.0.0.j3.fw /media/XXXX
    • Actually I had also an additional Intel network card so I could have skipped this step...
  • Partitionning:
    there is a first primary partition for Dell Utilities (FAT16), I left it just in case...;
    there is also a second primary partition: 2Gb of FAT32, empty, so I deleted it.
    partition #2: primary 10Gb ext3 / label=ROOT
    partition #3: primary 16Gb swap
    partition #5: logical 2Tb physical volume for LVM
    Configure LVM / ok to write table / Create VG with sda5, called vg0 (will be used by XEN)
  • Tasksel: SSH & standard utilities
  • Reboot
• SSH: PermitRootLogin no / ssh-copy-id ...
• Install mc, sudo (adduser xxx sudo)
• Renaming interfaces (always easier to remember what's plugged where...)
  • à la ifrename
    • aptitude install ifrename
    • Create /etc/iftab then reboot

intelG mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
intelD mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
bcm1   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx
bcm2   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx

• • à la udev
    • actually we don't need ifrename because udev is now doing the same, see /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, you can simply change the NAME key
  • Be sure the old name is not used anywhere else in your config, typically in /etc/network/interfaces

XEN: installation

• see notes on Debian wiki
• aptitude install xen-linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 xen-tools xen-utils
• backup /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp
• edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and uncomment line "(network-script network-bridge)" or for a non-default interface ethX: "(network-script 'network-bridge netdev=ethX')"
• reboot
• aptitude remove --purge linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 linux-image-2.6-amd64
• /etc/default/grub => GRUB_DEFAULT=2
• update-grub
• reboot
• cat /proc/xen/capabilities #(to check xend is running)

XEN: guest creation

• If you've a proxy it's much easier to have it defined in the environment variables:
  • Edit /etc/environment

http_proxy=http://myproxy:port

• • Logout/login
• Edit the config file for creating images (/etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf) to your needs:

--- xen-tools.conf.orig 2010-05-30 22:42:25.000000000 +0200
+++ xen-tools.conf      2010-08-17 17:47:35.000000000 +0200
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
 # LVM volume group here instead
 #
 ##
-# lvm = vg0
+lvm = vg0
 
 
 #
@@ -125,12 +125,12 @@
 #  Disk and Sizing options.
 ##
 #
-size   = 4Gb      # Disk image size.
+size   = 8Gb      # Disk image size.
 memory = 128Mb    # Memory size
 swap   = 128Mb    # Swap size
 # noswap = 1      # Don't use swap at all for the new system.
 fs     = ext3     # use the EXT3 filesystem for the disk image.
-dist   = `xt-guess-suite-and-mirror -s` # Default distribution to install.
+dist   = squeeze  # Default distribution to install.
 image  = sparse   # Specify sparse vs. full disk images.
 
 #
@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@
 #
 # Uncomment this if you wish the images to use DHCP
 #
-# dhcp = 1
+dhcp = 1
 
 
 ##
@@ -254,10 +254,10 @@
 #
 #  You may specify the things to use here:
 #
-# serial_device = hvc0 #default
+serial_device = hvc0 #default
 # serial_device = tty1
 #
-# disk_device = xvda #default
+disk_device = xvda #default
 # disk_device = sda
 #

XEN quickref

See also here and here

• xen-create-image --hostname=mynewguest
• xen-list-images
• xm create /etc/xen/mynewguest.cfg
• xm list
• xm console mynewguest
  • CTRL+] to detach
• xm shutdown mynewguest
• xm destroy mynewguest

If you want xen1.example.com to start automatically at the next boot of the system, then do this:

ln -s /etc/xen/xen1.example.com.cfg /etc/xen/auto

Sagemath guest

• xen-create-image --hostname=sagemath --memory=12288 --swap=12288 --vcpus=20
• WARNING strangely the default root password was disabled with a '*' in /etc/shadow so impossible to log in. I had to mount manually the lv (/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk) to remove the '*'
  One may prefer to setup the password interactively when creating the image with xen-create-image ... --passwd (or setup passwd=1 in /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf)
• lvm> lvcreate -L 1000G -n sagemath-data vg0
• /etc/xen/sagemath.cfg: add data volume:

root        = '/dev/xvda2 ro'
disk        = [
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk,xvda2,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-swap,xvda1,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-data,xvda3,w',
              ]

• xm create -c /etc/xen/sagemath.cfg
• Hook the data drive as /home
  • mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvda3
  • In /etc/fstab: /dev/xvda3 /home ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
  • mount /home