Xen 3.1 HVM on SLES 10 SP1

Notes about using Xen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- View:- http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA0-9251ENW.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------------- When copying image files the expectation is that the defined NICs in the image file will use the information supplied in the configuration file and have the correct IP information. In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, NIC configuration files use the MAC address as part of the filename, then associate that configuration file with eth0, eth1, or whatever was defined for that NIC. For example, a NIC with a MAC address of 00:00:00:11:11:11 would create a configuration file in /etc/sysconfig/networks called ifcfg-eth-id-00:00:00:11:11:11 and this may be associated with eth0. If you copy the image file to a new file, and create a Xen configuration file containing the MAC address of 00:00:00:22:22:22, when you start the new VM it will have two Ethernet entries in the /etc/sysconfig/networks directory: ifcfg-eth-id-00:00:00:11:11:11 tied to eth0 and ifcfg-eth-id-00:00:00:22:22:22 tied to eth1, which has not been configured yet. Because SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 forces persistent names by default, each new NIC will be assigned a new eth association. There are two approaches to solving this problem. The first requires editing the /etc/sysconfig/networks/config file, locate the variable FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES and change the value to no. Then you need to change the names of the ifcfg files to represent the necessary Ethernet association, e.g., change ifcfg-eth-id-00:00:00:11:11:11 to ifcfg-eth0. Once this has been done, copying and starting the image file will use the MAC address from the Xen configuration file for eth0 and obtain the expected IP information. The second approach requires modifying the /etc/udev/rules.d/30-net_persistent_names.rules and assigning specific MAC addresses to specific NICs.