Weblog entry #83 for Steve
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In my previous entry I said that I'd be rebooting this host a couple of times on Saturday to change the kernel and move towards a Xen system. As it happens I got impatient and did the upgrade on Friday.
It was mostly painless.
Installing Grub and getting it working with a standard Debian kernel via a serial console worked first time :)
Xen is another matter. I see the Xen kernel be loaded then the serial console is unavailable. I must investigate this.
For reference here is part of my menu.lst:
title Xen 3.0 / XenLinux 2.6 kernel /boot/xen.gz module /boot/xen-linux-2.6.12.6-xen root=/dev/hda2 ro console=tty0 console=ttyS0 ,115200n8 module /boot/xen-modules-2.6.12.6-xen title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8-2-k7 root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-k7 root=/dev/hda2 ro console=tty0 console= ttyS0,115200n8 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-2-k7 savedefault boot
Xen itself loaded and installed perfectly the first time round. I had some minor problems with setting up the networking, but these are all resolved now.
Rather than using NATting which is the default I'm using a routed setup with a bridge. This gives me a fair bit of flexability, and only moderate load.
In terms of the host I'm running on an AMD Athlon 1.6Ghz machine with 1Gb of memory. (Bogomips = 3309)
Under Xen the Domain-0 sees about 700Mb of memory, the other 300Mb seems to be hidden / allocated. Weird.
I reckon I can run about four virtual Xen instances if I wanted to, but no more than that. Happily I only actually one to run one, for testing networking scripts, Exim upgrades, etc. The kind of work that needs a dedicated IP and wont interfere with my main machine.
The other IP addresses are just a nice bonus. I'm sure I'll think of things to use them for - although using them will result in a slowdown of the main host....
If there is any interest I can write about routing public IP addresses via a Xen host, and bridging. But it is pretty trivial ..
Comments on this Entry
I'm very interessed in your Xen setup. I would like to read more about that, especially the network setup.
Bye Claus
http://www.allweil.net/
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I'm going to be away travelling on Monday/Tuesday, but I might have time for a quick writeup.
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if you concentrate more articles on basic setup and software tools configuration articles that would help more people and not publishing xen articles.i have not seen good article from you and people contributing good articles and you are not interested any more or ???????????????
now at least we will get good articles from you and you have already contributed good article and we are expecting more good articles than xen articles
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I believe that Xen is being used in production more and more, so that covering it is fair.
It is probably true that I mention things that I've written but that is mostly because they are what I know, and are useful for other people doing similar things.
I think if you look at lots of other websites you'll see a lot of recent articles published on Xen, it is stable, fast, and extremely useful.
If you have a problem with that then I guess you'd have to have a problem with this entire site. I've always written about things that I use, and things that I enjoy.
(eg. this article on using memcached.)
Really what I'm trying to say is that I think it is unfair to criticise articles, especially those written by volunteers, for being uninteresting as we're all interested in different things.
I admit I might be biased, but that isn't a new thing. I've been biased for things that I like, and I wrote, for the past year and a half. So it seems like it is unfair to suddenly suggest that this is bad. (Unless you're new here, perhaps?)
Really I guess the best thing I can say is that if you think there is something interesting that should be posted here then write it. Or suggest topics, and wait to see if other people volunteer to do so. As far as I'm concerned I'm a busy person so I spend my free time writing about things that interest me first and foremost. If other people like that great. If they don't they can go elsewhere, or submit their own content.
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1) you are writing articles only for you ok thanks for that and you are not considering people visting for your site and the comment you have menctioned abot that is really rude and you are telling people in different way of thinking
2)yes,people can go to any other sites and there are so many sites and forums providing help and i didn't expect this type of answers from as a website owner and debian developer
my point is just get more basic articles and that would help more people
i think you have taken differnent way and i am really disappointed with your answers and the way you are treating your website visitors like you have menctioned below comments
If you have a problem with that then I guess you'd have to have a problem with this entire site. I've always written about things that I use, and things that I enjoy.??????????
If they don't they can go elsewhere,???????????
thanks for your time i think you might be busy to reply for any other persons also
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I'm not saying that I totally write them for me, but more on subjects which interest me, and to be honest I tend to assume that the large number of visitors coming here suggestst that I'm doing a mostly OK job of that.
I'm sorry that you took my comments in a rude way, that certainly wasn't intended.
In the past when I've written very basic pieces several people complained that the information was too basic - so it seems whichever way I go I cannot please everybody, and that is something that I'm happy with.
I guess ultimately I try to write what I think will be useful articles, and I write them about the topics I know (so that I don't make mistakes) and hope that they will be useful.
If people say they are too advanced, or too basic, then the best I can say is write your own articles, or go elsewhere. I'm not trying to be rude, but I simply don't have the time to write articles on every subject that visitors might want. (I don't even have enough time to cover the topics that I want to do.)
If I'm told too often that I'm wasting my time, doing a bad job, or writing uninteresting articles the simplest solution is for me to stop. And I don't want to do that.
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If I'm not around, it doesn't mean you guys can start a brawl :p
Now for the real comment. To the anonymous person commenting earlier: Please keep in mind that Steve is "writing" regularly and as far as I know, he doesn't get paid for that. Another important point is that this is not only Steve's website any more. He might be the owner but this website has a huge community behind it. And because of that he should not be held solely responsible if you don't see many articles that interest you.
Here is what I suggest. Let us have a public scratchpad, which allows users (even anonymous??) to write a brief line/topic they want to have an article on/about. Once it gets submitted, someone (for now Steve) can allow it to be displayed* on the public-scratchpad for other users to see. Users who know a topic from the list and are willing to write about it can mark a checkbox which will "lock" it for say 3days(unlocking can occur automatically in case article is not submitted in that time). This indicates someone is working on the article. If the article gets submitted, the article request can be removed and/or replaced by the article's link.
* - making spam requests not appear on public-scratchpad.
PS: Who is ready to write the code to implement the public-scratchpad proposed above?
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An interesting idea, but I think overkil.
It would seem more sensible for people to write their proposed entries in their weblogs - since that allows comments, etc.
Plus it means I don't have to allow anonymous users to be treated specially. Instead normal user accounts are required - and that would be a good thing.
ps. no I dont get paid. Except indirectly by the google revenue I guess.
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Unfortunately, my employers do pay me...
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While that could possibly be a way to get Steve write what you want, but I think in the present scenario it should be the community which realises its responsibilities and knowledgeable people churn out articles themselves rather than depending only on Steve.
It should also be kept in mind that Steve does not only maintains the website and write articles for it, but also keeps on adding new features to it. Thats quite a bit he does for all of us. Thanks Steve.
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