Xen: Virtual Red Hat on Debian possible?

Question

I have no idea, is it possible to run a virtual Red Hat server on a debian system?

If yes, how?

I have debian lenny.

Thank you

Answer 1

using xen, this isnt a real problem.

You have two choices. If you only want a redhat based system like fedora or centos, you can install the xen-tools package. You need these packages to run xen in lenny:

     !dpkg
dpkg -l |grep xen
ii  libxenstore3.0                      3.2.1-2                  Xenstore communications library for Xen
ii  linux-image-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64      2.6.26-15                Linux 2.6.26 image on AMD64, oldstyle Xen support
ii  linux-modules-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64    2.6.26-15                Linux 2.6.26 modules on AMD64
ii  xen-hypervisor-3.2-1-amd64          3.2.1-2                  The Xen Hypervisor on AMD64
ii  xen-linux-system-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 2.6.26-15                XEN system with Linux 2.6.26 image on AMD64
ii  xen-shell                           1.9-1                    Console based Xen administration utility
ii  xen-tools                           4.1-1                    Tools to manage Debian XEN virtual servers
ii  xen-utils-3.2-1                     3.2.1-2                  XEN administrative tools
ii  xen-utils-common                    3.2.0-2                  XEN administrative tools - common files
ii  xenstore-utils                      3.2.1-2                  Xenstore utilities for Xen

With xen-create-image you can choose a Distibution you want to install. Read the Doc, its quite simple.

Second way is, install a plain redhat on a system you prefer. Then create a new Xen conf and create a new "Harddisk" with lvm or use dd to create a file based Harddsik. (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/xen/myharddrive ...) Create a filesystem on the new "Harddisk"

mkfs.ext3 /your/created/disk/or/lvm/lvolume

Mount it: mount -o loop /your/created/disk/or/lvm/lvolume /mnt/target and copy the content of your redhat root partition to /mnt/target (preferrable you have it on a seperate usb disk which you can mount in your xen system to /mnt/src but thats not a need)

unmount /mnt/target

Boot your xen with your new redhat installation. Maybe you get some trouble with the Kernel (missing modules), maybe Redhat needs some stuff which is not in the actual xen kernel image in lenny, but this should not be a big problem.

You can also use any other virtulization software like virtual box, vmware ....

Answer 2

If you are asking this kind of question, then it means you are not the kind of person who will find it easy to set up XEN. I suggest that you look for the virtualbox-ose package which is available for lenny. It runs like an application with a GUI for creating virtual machines and managing the virtual hardware. Then get an ISO of a Redhat variant, or use a real CDROM if you have one, and install it into the virtual machine. You'll have to go into Settings and tell it what to attach to the virtual CD drive before you start up your virtual machine. 512k RAM should be enough to get Redhat installed and runnning.

Answer 3

you check the following link lot of work around

http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/virtualization

Answer 4

I suggest that you look into KVM http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page . It is the choice of virtualization for red hat in RHEL 5.4 and it is also available in Debian. The specific thing here is that you do not need a modified kernel to run the host and the virtual machine so you can use any OS that you wish as a guest. The KVM virtualization technology is built-in in the recent linux kernels, so you won't have to worry for any patching, custom kernels whatsoever. As Rajat suggested visit www.howtoforge.com for specific tutorials. Oh and @Michael Dillon - i'm eager to see RH running with 512k RAM :D

Answer 5

You could look into Xen, VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, or VMWare Server. One of them should work.

If you want the official "Red Hat", you will need to get that from Reg Hat. If you want an unofficial "Red Hat", you can try Fedora or Centos.