The previous post mentioned that the machine would not start properly, and how to get a serial console going. The reason for the failure was that the NFS share did not mount properly. Not entirely sure why, but this solved it;
In /etc/fstab, I had:
[2a01:4f8:nnn:nnn::nnn]:/srv /srv nfs defaults,noatime 0 0
Changing to this seems to have solved it. I’m no expert in NFS, but it works for me:
[2a01:4f8:nnn:nnn::nnn]:/srv /srv nfs rw,noatime,hard,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14 0 0
Today I needed to see why a virtual machine under Xen was not starting up properly, and I knew it was possible to connect via a serial interface. Unfortunately this is not enabled by default (at least not in my installation). So here’s what to do.
ON GUEST MACHINE (my case is Ubuntu 12.04, using Startup system):
Add this in a new file /etc/init/hvc0.conf:
# Launch serial console for Xen
start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345] and (
not-container or
container CONTAINER=lxc or
container CONTAINER=lxc-libvirt)
stop on runlevel [!2345]
respawn
exec /sbin/getty -L 9600 hvc0 xterm
# End of file
ON HOST MACHINE:
In the VM’s config (my case this is /etc/xen/some_guest.cfg), add a line like this: extra=”console=hvc0 xencons=tty”. That’s hvc-zero btw.
Now you have to reboot the machine, possibly shutdown and re-create the VM for the Xen config to kick in.
Now you can connect to the console by:
xm list (to find your VM’s ID)
xm console [ID] to connect. You hit Ctrl+] to escape from it, which on my Swedish Mac means pressing Ctrl+Å.
