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Xenfire is a soft appliance that can be used to auto-install multiple virtual machines on a single physical server using the Xen virtualization technology. It can be useful for small and medium enterprises to consolidate their intranet servers and gateway server into one single physical server, while still preserving the administrative and security advantages of running two separate systems.
Xenfire2.0 is the first external release of Xenfire bootable CD-ROM iso image. It has a live CD to give demo/preview of Xenfire without having to install it to the harddisk. Once booted from the live CD, it gives users an interface to install Xenfire to the harddisk.
Xenfire also has an intutive Graphical User Interface to make administration a breeze.
Xenfire is an open-source project funded by Coriolis Technlogies Pvt. Ltd.
* Download Xenfire iso image from ftp://forgeftp.novell.com/xenfire * Burn a CD from this iso imge. Make sure to use -pad and -dao options to avoid ugly messages during CD boot. This is to counter read-ahead bug in linux kernel. More Info * Boot your system from the CD. It should start the liveCD. * Login as user: "xenfire" and password:"xenfire". And, you are ready to go.
Xenfire gives desktop icons, menu (accessible by right-click on X-window), as well as command line options to perform following actions:
* Install Xenfire to harddisk: (command-line: #gksudo -desktop %k ubiquity gtkui) * Login to Dom0: (command-line: #sudo -i) * Login to VM1 console: (command-line: #sudo xm console vm1) * Login to VM2 console: (command-line: #sudo xm console vm2) * Start Xen Domains: (command-line: #sudo /bin/start_domains.sh) * Stop Xen Domains: (command-line: #sudo /bin/stop_domains.sh) * Get status of Xen domains (command-line: #sudo xm list)
Xenfire requires a system with atleast 512 MB RAM. Xenfire runs on x86 compatible server.
Xenfire 2.0 is based on Ubuntu Dapper LTS 6.06.1 release. It boots Ubuntu Dapper 6.0.6.1 LTS server for Dom0, and two virtual machines: VM1 and VM2. These domains and virtual machines have networking auto-configured using DHCP.
Dom0 has minimal X installation with xdm, fluxbox, fbdesk in-order to provide a light-weight and intutive interface to perform common actions.
The LiveCD Dom0, VM1 and VM2 images boot from squashfs file-system kept on the CD-ROM and mounted in union with tmpfs(using unionfs). On harddisk installation, these filesystem images are copied to the harddisk partitions.
NOTE: If the X-window resolution is not satisfactory, following command can be used to configure it:
In the next Xenfire release, we plan to make virtual machines images and OS configurable from the installation menu.and provide ready-to-install Virtual machine OS images for various purposes e.g. web-server, mail-server, firewall, etc.
After installing Xenfire, the Virtual Machines can be customized as per the system needs. Xenfire installs minimum Ubuntu server on each virtual machine. Example: To make a virtual machine run a web server and another, say a mail server, web-server specific packages can be installed on VM1 and mail server specific packages can be installed on VM2. Ubuntu Wiki has quite detailed documentation on configuring various servers: Configuring Ubuntu Servers
| md5sum.txt | - | 2006-10-12 |
| xenfire-2.0.tar.gz | - | 2006-10-12 |
Xenfire is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
© 2008 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
