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Installatie OpenVZ op een Dell PowerEdge 2950 met Debian Etch (remote)

OpenVZ is virtualization software. That means, one can run a server on top of an existing server without having to deal with extra security issues!
Our PowerEdge 2950 had a low load, so it became the perfect testing-machine. One thing: if you are going to copy-paste my steps, you’ll have plenty of time to make and drink coffee when the new kernel is being compiled.OpenVZ is included in your kernel. That means, you need a special kernel because OpenVZ is not supported by default. Even though I had done my research, I couldn’t find the kernel I wanted, so I compiled it myself. I did use a few sites while installing:

http://www.howtoforge.org/debian_etch_openvz
http://wiki.openvz.org/Installation_on_Debian
http://www.howtoforge.com/openvz_debian_vpsLet’s start with fetching the necessary tools.

apt-get install inetutils-tools
apt-get install kernel-package libncurses5-dev fakeroot wget bzip2
apt-get update
apt-get install linux-source-2.6.18 kernel-patch-openvz vzctl vzquotaWe’ve got our tools now, and have all data we need to compile a new kernel. We’ll do it in the directory /usr/src. Let’s unpack the data and copy our existing configuration.

cd /usr/src
tar xjvf linux-source-2.6.18.tar.bz2
cd linux-source-2.6.18
cp /boot/config-2.6.17-2-amd64 .config
aptitude install kernel-package
make-kpkg --append_to_version=-1-openvz --added_patches=openvz --revision=1 kernel_imageI received a few error messages because I was working in a wrong directory, but those are easy to solve. I was asked a lot of questions, but since I almost answered every question with the default answer: hit the Enter button about 40 times. It will remember that. Now, you can start making coffee, because it took the machine about 30 minutes to compile the kernel. When it was done, I added the OpenVZ packages to my “apt-get” sources.list:

echo "deb http://debian.systs.org/ stable openvz" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
W: GPG error: http://debian.systs.org stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY C694690C52A9498A
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problemsMy friend Google got me this link: http://openvz.org/pipermail/users/2007-February/000591.html where I was told what to do:

wget http://debian.systs.org/dso_archiv_signing_key.asc
apt-key add dso_archiv_signing_key.asc
apt-get updateSince I did not receive any errors anymore, I knew it was alright. Time to head on to the next step: making the machine boot the right kernel.

dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.18-1-openvz_1_amd64.deb
update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.18-1-openvz
update-grub
cat /boot/grub/menu.lstThe new kernel should be mentioned now, probably as the first to be loaded. You could check if your image is present by listing the files in your /boot directory. An exciting moment is there: the reboot! After a few exciting minutes (the machine boots slowly), finally the response was there:

ssh myusername@myhostname
Linux MyHostName 2.6.18-1-openvz #1 SMP Wed Feb 28 10:24:08 CET 2007 x86_64Houston, we are online! Let’s head to the next step: installing the images.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 11:36 and is filed under Debian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.