I’ve been dabbling with virtual box up until this point. But have decided to take it to the next step by using xvm to run my virtual machines. I have taken a guide from BDerzhavets at this site : http://bderzhavets.blogspot.com/2008/12/xvm-on-opensolaris-2008.html
First step is to open package manager and find the “vitalization” grouping. Install everything in this group. You’ll probably find some packages are already installed.
Next you’ll need to add the xvm kernel to the grub startup menu (menu.1st). This bit is a bit of blind faith from my perspective – its a shame that the xvm kernel package doesn’t add itself to grub? Anyhow… You need to add the following as another boot option in the /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst file;
title OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86 xVM
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
kernel$ /boot/$ISADIR/xen.gz
module$ /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
After a bit more reading you can apparently run bootadm -m upgrade to automatically ad the new kernel to the boot menu. But there might be some issues with on-boot? Some good info on this page : http://trevoro.ca/blog/2008/05/07/getting-xvm-to-work-in-opensolaris-200805/
…added the xVM entry automatically after performing the linkage steps. You will still need to add the ‘bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris lines however.
Update : i have not implemented this yet – i’m currently happy with the stable file / virtual box server that i’m using at the moment. Its also a little early to check out this tech, as there is a lot of work being done at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/ that is near completion.