Comments on: How To Install XenServer 5.5 on an external USB drive

By: robbie

robbie — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:25:03 +0000

Thanks a lot! Our Xenserver crashed and did Kernel Panic on boot (from internal harddrive).
I installed it on a 16gb usb stick and can now salvage the virtual machines
Saves me a lot of headache

By: admin

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:21:15 +0000

Hi,

Please take a look at my newest post How To Install XenServer 5.6 Beta to external USB

The installation is straight forward, and the VMware instructions can be used if you are not familiar with it.

Please note that you will need a 16GB USB stick and not all of them are supported. If you’re having problems please try another stick / external harddrive.

Eric

By: Trent

Trent — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:44:15 +0000

I’m having the same issue as Leon and Michael. I watched the youtube video but it is a video on how to install XenServer on a vmworkstation, not a usb drive. I watched him install and he does nothing different from a standard local disk install. If I try to install to the usb disk using the typical install (like in the video) it fails with an unrecoverable error.

I tried assuming that was supposed to happen and follow the rest of the instructions at that point but I still get sh error on step 10.

Perhaps we need a more detailed step 3?

Thanks!

By: admin

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:10:51 +0000

Hi everybody,

As you see it’s very easy to type something wrong, a nice tip is to use the TAB key to autofill what’s missing.

Eric

By: LATurner

LATurner — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:03:54 +0000

I got it working on a flash drive on a blade server, using these instructions and XenServer update 2, much thanks!

I had to try three times to install the same thing on an identical blade server for my second server. So easy to make a typo. I’d like to point out a typo in your directions above, Step 12, “Rename old initrd image : mv initrd 2.6.18-128.1.6.el5.xs5.5.0.496.1012xen.img initrd-2.6.18-128.1.6.el5.xs5.5.0.496.1012xen.img.old”, there should be a dash after the first initrd.

Thanks again!

By: Donuts

Donuts — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:12:28 +0000

I think Leon and Michaels problem will be they either didn’t do step 3 or they are mounting the wrong usb device.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:06:17 +0000

Hi Michael,

The current ISO from Citrix (last time I checked) was the XenServer 5.5 version and this installs fine to USB. What I did see when I updated my XenServer 5.5 USB drive with Update 2 via XenCenter the XenServer goes into a boot loop. I havn’t had time to solve this issuse yet, will post a seperate post when this is fixed. Anyone else successfully updated XS5.5 USB with Update 2 ?

Eric

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:30:56 +0000

I’m also getting the same error as Leon whilst trying to chroot. (trying to install Xenserver 5.5 update 2 onto my USB drive)

I’m sure the commands aren’t getting mistyped as I’ve tried this 4-5 times …

Also another step of mkdir /tmp/sda/sys/ is needed for it to copy files to the drive correctly …

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:32:38 +0000

Great post. It works successfully but… when finally booting on the USB key, my SAS RAID controler (HP P410i) cannot be accessed, although I wanted to create SR on it !
I guess the mkinitrd command needs an additional option to create an image with the SAS driver. Can anyone help ?
No problem when installing Xen on the SAS disks instead. So, I’m sure XenServer can use this device.

Many thanks in advance

By: admin

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:15 +0000

Hi Leon,

Make sure you type exactly as show with space and everything, even when you think it’s wrong. Use the TAB key to auto fill.

Have you stopped at number 10 ? It’s possible that you get “no job control in this shell”, but this error message can be ignored.

Eric