Xen

This article describes how I created a Windows XP virtual machine on a physical box which runs Xen 3.2. The dom0 for Xen is a Linux distro - Debian "Lenny". The physical box has an AMD Athlon X2 64-bit dual-core processor with 4GB of RAM. Xen's HVM emulation functionality is used to create the Windows domU.

This article might equally well be used to model how to use Xen HVM to boot any operating system for which you have an installation CD.

This documents my efforts to produce a 32-bit Debian Lenny image for Xen with a 64-bit Debian Lenny dom0.

• arch: AMD64 Athlon X2
• os: Xen 3.2 (via Debian Lenny's install)
• dom0: Debian Lenny 64-bit
• domU: Debian Lenny 32-bit (desired)

This documents how I built a Debian development environment capable of building the Mozilla source code. I believe that it is minimal — all of the installed Debian packages are necessary, and they are sufficient.

After using a Xen VM image for a while, its fixed size can become limiting — it can run out of space. Fortunately, it is easy to resize a Xen VM image. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do while the VM is operating; a shutdown is required.

To resize a Xen image for a running Xen VM, follow these instructions.

This is an elided log of my installation of Xen in which I omit mentioning the many wrong paths that I took.

Started with functioning Debian 5.0.2 stable installed on a box with AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 64-bit processor with virtualization technology.

This tutorial summarizes how I built Mozilla Firefox on my new Debian 5.0.2 ("Lenny") installation. The box is AMD Athlon X2 64-bit. I document the packages that one must install with 'apt-get' in order to satisfy the build dependencies on this platform. [Updated 2009-Oct-11 to reflect new dependencies.]