2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
layout: post
|
|
|
|
|
|
title: "Citrix XenServer 5.5 vs. Debian 5.0 upgrade to 6.0"
|
2016-02-26 15:19:42 +00:00
|
|
|
|
date: 2011-05-27T17:33:41Z
|
2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
|
|
|
|
tags: [citrix-xenserver, debian]
|
|
|
|
|
|
permalink: /blog/2011/5/27/citrix-xenserver-vs-debian-5-0-upgrade-to-6-0
|
|
|
|
|
|
published: true
|
|
|
|
|
|
author:
|
|
|
|
|
|
name: Gergely Polonkai
|
|
|
|
|
|
email: gergely@polonkai.eu
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
