Last weekend I started to convert my home systems to Etch and Xen. My present Xen setup is based on Ubuntu for the dom0's and Debian Sarge for the domU's.

Reading through the Etch release notes indicated that the package maintainers have done some job on integrating Xen into the Etch release. This should give me the tools needed to go Debian Etch all the way.

And Etch delivers ! The installation of Xen, after a base install, is as simple as

# aptitude install xen-linux-system-2.6.18-4-xen-686

and voila, the system is Xen enabled. A big thanks to the package maintainers !!

The only thing I've found that needs manual configuration is the networking part. Its easy. If using bridging like I do, then edit the Xen config file

# nano /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp

locate the line

(network-script network-dummy)

and replace network-dummy whith network-bridge. Like

(network-script network-bridge)

Reboot and you are ready to create domU's with the excellent Xen-Tools package, installed with aptitude naturally.