[Vserver] partial vserver 1.9.5 setup instructions

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 08:12:46 -0700

I’ve started the process of creating vservers for testing the i/o limits. I decided to document all of my steps. I’ll continue this but it won’t resume until end of the week. I thought I should send the instructions along for peer review. I’ve sent the message as HTML so that the modest formatting will remain intact.

 

It’s in 3 parts; parts A and B should apply to anyone installing vservers. Part C, which details the actual creation of vservers is incomplete and focused on debian and ubuntu versions of linux.

 

Part A details the installation of a plain vanilla kernel. Since most distributions use modified kernels I explicitly included a step where you try out a plain kernel without the vserver patches so that you’ll know if something breaks because of the plain vanilla kernel or because of the vserver stuff.

 

By necessity, Part A will be somewhat vague because I don’t even know what kernel modules I need, let alone the ones you will need. If in doubt, compile everything as a module (imho).

 

Here are the instructions. If someone wants to WIKI them, I’ll update part C in the wiki when I complete my steps. Otherwise, send me revision notes (cc the mailing list please) and I’ll include them in my final doc.

 

PART A: PREPARE A VANILLA KERNEL

  1. download a vanilla kernel and unpack (i.e. tar jxvf linux-2.6.11.5.tar.bz2)
  2. cd into the kernel folder (i.e. cd linux-2.6.11.5)
  3. Configure the kernel using your favorite utility (i.e. make config, make menuconfig, make xconfig, make gconfig) NOTE: Leave out x25 (not even as a module)
  4. run make to build the kernel
  5. run make install and make modules_install to install the kernel modules
  6. you may need to build the initrd.img file (i.e. mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.11.5 2.6.11.5)
  7. you may need to add the kernel to your grub menu. This varies dramatically between distributions. Leave one of your known good kernel entries in the menu.
  8. reboot, ensure to use the new vanilla kernel
  9. If everything works ok, proceed with the vserver installation, otherwise go back and fix the problems.

 

PART B: PREPARE A VSERVER ENABLED KERNEL

  1. cd back one folder so that you are outside of the kernel source (cd ..)
  2. download the vserver patch into the same folder that holds your linux kernel source folder. (i.e. typing ls should show something like: linux-2.6.11.5/ linux-2.6.11.5.tar.bz2 linux-vserver-1.9.5.tar.bz2)
  3. uncompress the patch (i.e. tar jxvf linux-vserver-1.9.5.tar.bz2)
  4. apply the patch to the kernel (i.e. patch -p0 < patch-2.6.11.5-vs1.9.5.diff)
  5. cd into the kernel folder (i.e. cd linux-2.6.11.5)
  6. Configure the kernel with the relevant new changes by using make oldconfig. Accept the default options unless you know a reason to do otherwise
  7. edit .config and change the line CONFIG_LOCALVERSION to something like this: CONFIG_LOCALVERSION="-vserver" in order to differentiate your new kernel from the vanilla kernel you made in part A
  8. run make to build the new kernel
  9. run make install to install the new kernel
  10. run make modules_install to install the kernel modules
  11. you may need to build the initrd.img file (i.e. mkinitrd -o initrd.img-2.6.11.5-vs1.9.5-vserver 2.6.11.5-vs1.9.5-vserver)
  12. you may need to add the kernel to your grub menu. This varies dramatically between distributions. Leave one of your known good kernel entries in the menu.
  13. reboot, ensure to use the new vserver enabled kernel
  14. If everything works ok, you can now create virtual servers

 

 

THIS SECTION BELOW IS INCOMPLETE! BEWARE! (ESPECIALLY AFTER STEP 9)

 

PART C: CREATE A VIRTUAL SERVER

  1. download the tools for the vserver and unpack (i.e. tar jxvf util-vserver-0.30.204.tar.bz2)
  2. cd into the tools folder (i.e. cd util-vserver-0.30.204)
  3. run ./configure to configure the tools. You may have to resolve dependency problems at this point. I had a few but the instructions provided with the error helped in all cases.
  4. run make and if all works well, run make check to confirm things are good.
  5. if all is well, install the tools by running make install
    • NOTE: At this point, the installation will become somewhat distribution specific. I am using Ubuntu 4.1 (Warty) as the host and I am also using it as the guest operating system. Fedora core has the best support so you may want to use the current release of Fedora for both your host and guest. If you want Ubuntu/Debian, these instructions will work for you:
  6. Ensure you have the debootstrap package installed (i.e. apt-get install debootstrap)
  7. mkdir /vservers (if your / partition is low on disk space, consider either mounting new filesystem on /vservers or creating a vservers folder on another filesystem and linking it to /vservers - you will need a lot of disk space here)
  8. Create the new ubuntu disk image. If you want to use debian, google for debootstrap and you should see alternate syntax to use for the debootstrap program. (i.e. to create a virtual server named "vsa" with the ip address "192.168.1.99" and the host name "vsa.mynetwork.com" use this command: vserver vsa build -m debootstrap --hostname vsa.mynetwork.com --netdev eth0 --interface 192.168.1.99/24 -- -d warty -m http://archive.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu)
  9. After much installing and configuring you will be prompted with a message similar to "I: Base system installed successfully." which means your vserver is setup.
  10. Start the vserver named "vsa" by running the command vserver vsa start
  11. Enter the vserver named "vsa" by issuing the command vserver vsa enter

 

 

--

Matthew Nuzum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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