[ale] What'v'I got with SuSE-10.1 'XEN' boot option

[rstory-l at 2006.revelstone.com (Robert Story)]

On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:19:06 -0500 (EST) John wrote:
JM> I installed SuSE-10.1 and I notice an interesting boot option in the GRUB 
JM> menu: 'XEN'. It supposedly starts up a kernel '/boot/xen.gz' with two 
JM> "modules": '/boot/vmlinuz-xen' and '/boot/initrd-xen'.
JM> 
JM> What is this option and what can it do for me? The question isn't entirely 
JM> academic: I'm setting up another system where I would like to run a legacy 
JM> Linux (based on RH-7.3) as a virtual OS on that machine. Am I looking at a 
JM> useful tool for that purpose here on the SuSE boot screen?

Xen does indeed provide for virtual hosts. However, unless you have newer
hardware (a CPU with VT support), you can only run an OS that is XEN aware.
The stock 7.3 kernel is obviously not going to be XEN aware.

For example, I have a CentOS guest running on my FC5 host, but since CentOS
doesn't have XEN support in their kernels, it is actually running a FC5 guest
kernel. I don't know if RH-7.3 would work with a modern kernel.