[xen-tools] Re: domU save-state issue with xen-tools & long hostnames

[C.J. Adams-Collier]

I was thinking we could accept a --hostname and --domainname argument.
 We could name the .cfg file $hostname.cfg if there is not already one
(most common use case) and store only the $hostname part in the
$hostname.cfg's 'name' field...

we would need some place to store the list of domain names on this
dom0 in this case, though...  Which increases the overhead of
xen-tools and adds a level of complexity...  It might be relatively
easy to store the list in /etc/xen-tools/limage-list.txt or some such

Cheers,

C.J.

On 9/29/07, Graham Freeman <graham.freeman at cernio.com> wrote:
> Howdy, folks,
>
> So, I found a xen-tools-related domU save-state issue on one of my
> new Xen servers.
>
> Here's a summary of my environment:
>
> 8-core 2GHz Xeon
> 16GB RAM
> Ubuntu 6.06.1-LTS
> Xen 3.1
> Xen-Tools v3.7 installed from .tgz
>
> example command used to create an image:
> 'xen-create-image --hostname amphibia.longcompanyname.com --memory
> 2GB --size 25GB --dist dapper --ip 209.237.eli.ded'
>
>
> This resulted in the hostname on the virtual machine being set to
> "amphibia.longcompanyname.com", which is also how Xen saw it for
> virtual machine management purposes.  Unfortunately, that's too long
> for Xen, and it handles the situation poorly.   Instead of
> complaining that the hostname is too long, it simply errors out in
> certain circumstances (e.g. rebooting the dom0) and instead of saving
> the state of the VM to disk, it triggers a clean shutdown of the VM.
>
> However, a nearly-identical VM with hostname 'enable.short.com'
> worked fine, indicating that the length of the hostname was the issue.
>
> The solution was to change the hostname from Xen's perspective by
> changing the file '/etc/xen/amphibia.longcompanyname.com.cfg' so that
> this line:
>
>
> name        = 'amphibia.longcompanyname.com'
>
>
> was shortened thus:
>
>
> name        = 'amphibia'
>
>
> One final clean shutdown of amphibia and then re-start (via 'xm
> create /etc/xen/amphibia.longcompanyname.com.cfg'), and now Xen
> properly saves the state of the VM when I run '/etc/init.d/xendomains
> stop'.
>
>
>
> Graham Freeman
> General Manager, Cernio Technology Cooperative
> Email/Jabber:  graham.freeman at cernio.com
> +1 415 462 2991
> http://cernio.com/cooperative/
>
>
>


-- 
moo.