Overview

Updating a debian etch (v4.1) system to lenny (v5.0) also involves an upgrade of xen from v3.0 to v3.2. This can create quite some hassle for specific setups.

The documentation below describes some of the issues, that we ran into, when we upgraded the https://systemausfall.org server.

The xen network setup

Our xen network setup is not very common. Thus it should be helpful to give you a short introduction.

Overview

Network interfaces:

dom0 has one physical network interface: eth0
dummy network interfaces (kernel module dummy) are used for most bridges in dom0
most domU share a common network bridge xenbr0
dom0's eth0 is bridged to only one gateway domU as xenbr1
some domU are connected to the gateway domU via separate bridges (xenbr2 and xenbr3)

Advantages of this setup:

the traffic of all domU hosts flows through the gateway domU:
- effective traffic control is possible
- global routing or tunneling (vpn?) setups are possible
separate networks for different zones of trust

Disadvantages:

complexity

Configuration details

Our network configuration script is linked in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp:

(network-script custom_separate_bridges.sh)

The above script is located in /etc/xen/scripts/custom_separate_bridges.sh:

dir=$(dirname "$0")

# the common network bridge for all sao hosts
"$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=0 netdev=dummy0 bridge=xenbr0

# the bridge connected to the internet (only for the gateway)
"$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=1 netdev=eth0 bridge=xenbr1

# the bridge for the separated sao-network (www-users)
"$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=2 netdev=dummy1 bridge=xenbr2

# the bridge for the network of public IP addresses (mail server ...)
"$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=3 netdev=dummy2 bridge=xenbr3

Problematic details

Update the kernel

Update the kernel link for all domU

To ease the maintenance of the domU kernel during upgrades, we use symlinks in /boot:

thorax:~# ls -l /boot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       35 2008-12-28 05:20 domU-initrd -> /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-xen-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       32 2008-12-28 05:20 domU-kernel -> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-xen-amd64
 -- snipped some more details --

Update these links to the new domU kernel:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       35 2008-12-28 05:20 domU-initrd -> /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-xen-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       32 2008-12-28 05:20 domU-kernel -> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-xen-amd64

Make sure, that all xen host configuration files (e.g. in /etc/xen/ or /etc/xen/vm/) contain the following lines:

kernel  = '/boot/domU-kernel'
ramdisk = '/boot/domU-initrd'

Update the configuration file of xen-tools (/etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf) to use these kernel symlinks by default for new xen hosts:

kernel = /boot/domU-kernel
initrd = /boot/domU-initrd
#kernel      = /boot/vmlinuz-`uname -r`
#initrd      = /boot/initrd.img-`uname -r`

Update the new module directory in all domU

shutdown all xen hosts
mount the system partitions of the xen hosts

copy the new modules directory:

cp -a /lib/modules/`uname -r` $MNT_DIR/lib/modules/

No terminal for ssh login

Behaviour

PTY allocation request failed on channel 0
stdin: is not a tty

Even xm console $HOST_NAME stops before the login prompt.

Workaround

Debian bug [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=502798 #502798] suggests to add the following lines to the configuration file of each domU:

# necessary for ssh login since lenny
# see http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=502798
extra   = "console=hvc0"

This allows to login via ssh, but xm console still does not work.

Broken network interfaces in dom0

Our