Problems with getting Xen working ...

IF you are looking for how to install Xen, you can find it here.

Trying to get Xen working , ran into some problems ...

1. There is this peculiar problem that I faced with all the kernels that I tried as Dom0.

Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
-Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
-Check root delay = (did the system wait long enough?)
-Check root=(did the system wait for the right device?)
-Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist. Dropping to shell!

Busybox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-2ubuntu7) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

The hypervisor was booting fine, but the Dom0 refused to recognise my root device and would drop me into busybox.

The solution to this problem is to pass an extra parameter to the kernel, indicating that it should wait longer for the root device. (SCSI disks have this problem).
So now, you need to edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst. The parameter to be passed is "rootdelay". rootdelay=90 has worked for me. You may experiment with lower/higer values.

$sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

#######Snippet - menu.lst ###########

title Xen 3.4.0 / Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.18.8
uuid fe8adb1a-7b82-40c4-b7d9-e35921c1155f
kernel /boot/xen-3.4.0.gz
module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-xen-686 root=LABEL=root ro console=tty0 rootdelay=90
module /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-xen-686

2. The second problem that I faced was with the 2.6.18 xenified kernel. The kernel boots into busybox and the keyboard becomes totally unusable. None of the keys works.
Although I did notice that the quickplay buttons do generate an interrupt ( it shows a message on the screen when I press a quickplay button), the rest of the keys are useless.

Could not fix this :-(

3. The 3rd problem that I faced was with the 2.6.26 Debian xenified kernel, along with the first one.

ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (i/o error, err_mask= 0x4)

A little googling led me to think this was an ACPI problem. So I tried passing acpi=off in the kernel cmdline, but did not work out.
Some more googling led me in various directions. Tried atleast 5 different parameters.

The one parameter that finally worked was pci=nomsi . Found it here, and oddly enough as a solution to a different problem !

Apparently this is occurs due to problem of the Debian kernel on some motherboards and is consistently reproducable.

So, the final kernel command line that works perfectly is :

/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-xen-686 root=LABEL=root ro console=tty0 rootdelay=90 pci=nomsi

Hope this helps !

Cheers ! :-)