Lately, I wanted set up a Ubuntu Hardy DomU on an existing Debian Etch Dom0 box. Usually, setting up Debian-based DomUs is very simple with xen-create-image and debootstrap (there are tons of tutorials out there dealing with this topic), but unfortunately Etch’s version of debootstrap doesn’t support Ubuntu Hardy. I spent a surprisingly long time on searching the net until I found a solution for this problem on a french site: Installer et configurer Xen sur Debian 4.0 Etch (it’s a complete howto for Xen on Debian Etch, but it deals with the Hardy part too). The author created a backport of the debootstrap package, which enables you to debootstrap Hardy.
First, you have to create the hardy.d directory (symlink) for xen-tools.
$ cd /usr/lib/xen-tools $ ln -s ubuntu.d hardy.d
There’s a debian repository holding the backport package, however I got problems to use that repository on an amd64 box, so I downloaded and installed the package manually.
$ wget http://falcon.landure.fr/pool/etch/debootstrap/debootstrap_1.0.10_all.deb $ dpkg -i debootstrap_1.0.10_all.deb
Now you should be able to debootstrap a Hardy DomU.
$ xen-create-image --hostname=hardy --ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx --size=5Gb --memory=256Mb --dist=hardy --mirror=http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
3 Comments
Daniel Cestari
04.11.2008 00:38
I realise you’ve done this not so long ago so I’ll ask, I tryed to do this following the same path as you did, but I have kernel errors and so on my domU, I suppouse that the kernel from debian etch is just too old for this brand new hardy. Did you find this same error? What did you do? Thanks in advance!
–
Daniel
Lone Wolf
15.11.2008 12:58
Hi,
first, thank you for the link to my site
. The Xen article was a work in progress at the time you wrote this post.
Now, the article is finished and translated in english:
Install and setup Xen on Debian 4.0 Etch
It handle domU default configuration with backups and upgrade scripts. This is how I use Xen, so I don’t know if it will be of any use to you
but i was willing to keep you updated 
Lone Wolf
Mathias
29.11.2008 05:18
Hi Lone,
thanks for the update and especially for your package, as I wrote it was the only working solution I could find for my problem
Regarding your complete tutorial: it will be one of the first resources I’ll consider when I set up a Xen server from scratch the next time
maff