Debian Lenny

Added by Ewan Mellor http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/Debian+Lenny

Comment: Update link point release 3 version of jigdo.

Introduction

From version 5.5 onwards XenServer supports Debian GNU/Linux 5 AKA "Lenny" as a guest Virtual Machine. This includes installation of Lenny from a standard Debian network mirror as well as installation from CD/DVD image.

Note that XenServer 5.5 only supports 32 bit installations of Lenny.

Installation From DVD/CD

Unfortunately at the time of release the Official Debian installation CD and DVD ISO images did not contain a XenServer-compatible kernel and therefore cannot be used with XenServer. To remedy this Citrix has made available a custom built Unofficial DVD image containing a XenServer-compatible kernel.

Downloading A XenServer-compatible installation ISO

Citrix has made the DVD image available using the Jigdo(Jigsaw Download) utility. Jigdo allows ISO images to be downloaded quickly and efficiently by retrieving the majority of the data from a nearby mirror only obtaining a minimal template from the centralised download site.

If you have an existing Debian installation the obtaining jigdo is as simple as running

# aptitude install jigdo-file

If you do not have an existing Debian installation then jigdo can be download from its website. Jigdo is available for both Linux and Windows machines.

Once you have installed jigdo you should select a mirror from the Debian Mirror List. Choose a mirror which is geographically near to your location and which includes the i386 architecture. e.g ftp://ftp.XX.debian.org/debian/

After you have installed jigdo and selected a mirror you are ready to begin downloading the ISO from Citrix. Drop to a shell prompt or command line console. On Windows you will need to change to the directory where you unpacked jigdo.

Note: You must download the image from the URL given. The images available on Debian mirrors are not compatible with XenServer.

# jigdo-lite http://ca.downloads.xensource.com/debian/lenny/debian-503-i386-source-xen-DVD-1.jigdo

Jigdo will automatically download the template file (around 40M in size) and then will prompt you for a location to scan for existing packages. This can be useful if you have already downloaded Official Lenny images since you can reuse many of the packages on Official CDs. To do this simply mount or insert the Official CD/DVD and enter the path to it.

Next jigdo will prompt for a mirror to use, enter the mirror you selected above.

Jigdo will then begin downloading packages. If it complains about missing packages you should select another mirror and try again, this will not redownload any packages which were successfully retrieved.

When jigdo has completed it will leave debian-50-i386-source-xen-DVD-1.iso in the current directory.

Adding Additional CD/DVD Images

The custom XenServer-compatible DVD image contains a subset of the Debian software repository.

In order to access the remainder after installation you can either make use of a Debian network mirror in the normal way or you can add additional CD/DVD images using the Official images. To do this simply insert a CD/DVD into the virtual machine's CD drive and on the guest console run

# apt-cdrom add

Repeat this for as many CD/DVD images as you are interested in.