35 lines
2.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
35 lines
2.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
|
Citrix XenServer 5.5 vs. Debian 5.0 upgrade to 6.0
|
|||
|
##################################################
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
:date: 2011-05-27T17:33:41Z
|
|||
|
:category: blog
|
|||
|
:tags: citrix-xenserver,debian
|
|||
|
:url: blog/2011/5/27/citrix-xenserver-vs-debian-5-0-upgrade-to-6-0.html
|
|||
|
:save_as: blog/2011/5/27/citrix-xenserver-vs-debian-5-0-upgrade-to-6-0.html
|
|||
|
:status: published
|
|||
|
:author: Gergely Polonkai
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Few weeks ago I’ve upgraded two of our Debian based application servers from 5.0 to 6.0.
|
|||
|
Everything went fine, as the upgraded packages worked well with the 4.2 JBoss instances. For the
|
|||
|
new kernel we needed a reboot, but as the network had to be rebuilt, I postponed this reboot until
|
|||
|
the network changes. With the network, everything went fine again, we successfully migrated our
|
|||
|
mail servers behind a firewall. Also the Xen server (5.5.0, upgrade to 5.6 still has to wait for
|
|||
|
a week or so) revolted well with some storage disks added. But the application servers remained
|
|||
|
silent…
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
After checking the console, I realised that they don’t have an active console. And when I tried
|
|||
|
to manually start them, XenServer refused with a message regarding ``pygrub``.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
To understand the problem, I had to understand how XenServer boots Debian. It reads the
|
|||
|
``grub.conf`` on the first partition’s root or ``/boot`` directory, and starts the first option,
|
|||
|
without asking (correct me, if I’m mistaken somewhere). However, this ``pygrub`` thing can not
|
|||
|
parse the new, grub2 config. This is kinda frustrating.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
For the first step, I quickly installed a new Debian 5.0 system from my template. Then I attached
|
|||
|
the disks of the faulty virtual machine, and mounted all its partitions. This way I could reach
|
|||
|
my faulty 6.0 system with a chroot shell, from which I could install the ``grub-legacy`` package
|
|||
|
instead of grub, install the necessary kernel and XenServer tools (which were missing from both
|
|||
|
machines somehow), then halt the rescue system, and start up the original instance.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Next week I will do an upgrade on the XenServer to 5.6.1. I hope no such problems will occur.
|