XCP-ng installation and setup hell

[Octopuss]

I did watch some of his channel, but it's pretty overwhelming.
Right now I can't get over the part where the VM storage is created as ext3 instead of ext4, which the OS supposedly supports.

 

[tsteine]

You could use the command line for xe sr-create with type=ext4 if you want to force it to ext4.

 

[Octopuss]

Don't I need to remove the SR created during installation first?
Command line hell for a Windows guy, here we go again, lol...

 

[tsteine]

I see. You only have 1 drive then?

XCP-ng is opinionated in that it assumes you have a dedicated drive for the hypervisor's "privileged os" or "dom0", so it consumes the entire drive for that purpose with the file system of choice by the developers of xcp-ng for stability.

My suggestion here would be to get a second drive and separate your concerns with the VM data on its on dedicated drive, and the os disk dedicated to the hypervisor itself, the drive housing the VMs can run ext4.

 

[Octopuss]

That's just what I have. One SSD for the system and one for the VMs. But that's as far as I'v gotten thus far

 

[tsteine]

I see. It should be noted that I've not used xenserver since it was open source distributed from citrix itself without limitation, so it's been a few years, but as I recall, you should be able to detach and remove the existing SR.

If it's not possible by GUI, then your best bet is:
(edit i'm silly)
sr-forget
xe command reference | XCP-ng Documentation


Then you could reformat, sr-destroy is a bit less forgiving.

 

[Octopuss]

That will take "some" reading up. Ewww.
Do I just SSH into the server or?...
edit: Guess not. Those commands are not recognized. I hope there is a way to do this from MobaXterm somehow, I can't imagine typing all the guids manually through the IPMI remote management.

 

[tsteine]

That will take "some" reading up. Ewww.
Do I just SSH into the server or?...

Yes. xe should be available from your default shell on the server.

 

[acp]

Is the bug getting fixed anytime soon?

How serious is it, or rather, the workaround has any negative implications?
[/QUOTE]

From the documentation:


However pf in FreeBSD does not handle them correctly and will drop them, leading to broken performance.


The solution is to simply turn off checksum-offload on the virtual xen interfaces for pfSense in the TX direction only (TX towards the VM itself). Then the packets will be checksummed like normal and pf will no longer complain.


I never personally seen it, however I haven't run any production machine using FreeBSD in xcp-ng. My pfsense is running on hardware.

 

[Octopuss]

Yes. xe should be available from your default shell on the server.

[22:27 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-forget uuid=ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea
The SR is still connected to a host via a PBD. It cannot be destroyed or forgotten.
sr: ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea (Local storage)


...I knew it would be fun.
Don't you love messing around with shit you have ZERO idea about? lmao

 

[acp]

[22:27 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-forget uuid=ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea
The SR is still connected to a host via a PBD. It cannot be destroyed or forgotten.
sr: ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea (Local storage)


...I knew it would be fun.
Don't you love messing around with shit you have ZERO idea about? lmao

The only time I use xe is when something is really broken. xcp-ng does have a forum and the support is pretty good there as well.

XCP-ng

XCP-ng community forum

xcp-ng.org

 

[tsteine]

[22:27 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-forget uuid=ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea
The SR is still connected to a host via a PBD. It cannot be destroyed or forgotten.
sr: ae0ab02d-370e-051d-effd-b1c683e7aaea (Local storage)

try pbd-unplug
xe command reference | XCP-ng Documentation

 

[Octopuss]

Yup, I figured that out already.
Are there any important parameters for creating a SR that I should be aware of?

Ext4 support in XCP-ng

Ext4 has been around for a while now, but for various reasons, it was never implemented in XenServer for local storage. We fixed that in XCP-ng! Local SR Despite the fact that shared SRs are the most common way to store your VMs (mainly because you can migrate a VM

xcp-ng.org

says to do
xe sr-create type=ext4 name-label=mySR host-uuid=<host_UUID> device-config:device=/dev/sdX

 

[Octopuss]

I guess I give up.
[23:16 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-create type=ext4 name-label=localSR-ext4 host-uuid=ee0eaa1a-431d-4681-aba7-0ab00bc0268e device-config:device=/dev/nvme1n1
Error code: SR_BACKEND_FAILURE_1200
Error parameters: , The `ext4` SR type is deprecated since XCP-ng 8.1.
Use the main `ext` driver instead. It will create an EXT4 filesystem now, not EXT3 anymore as it used to.,

Ok, so I did what it asked.
[23:19 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-create type=ext name-label=localSR-ext4 host-uuid=ee0eaa1a-431d-4681-aba7-0ab00bc0268e device-config:device=/dev/nvme1n1
e35d0552-7c57-bb60-e806-c50ceb3b7be1
But then...


Is that a visual bug or why does it say ext3? omg...

 

[acp]

Yup, I figured that out already.
Are there any important parameters for creating a SR that I should be aware of?

Ext4 support in XCP-ng

Ext4 has been around for a while now, but for various reasons, it was never implemented in XenServer for local storage. We fixed that in XCP-ng! Local SR Despite the fact that shared SRs are the most common way to store your VMs (mainly because you can migrate a VM

xcp-ng.org

says to do
xe sr-create type=ext4 name-label=mySR host-uuid=<host_UUID> device-config:device=/dev/sdX

That is probably old as the official documentation says it formats ext4.

Storage in XCP-ng | XCP-ng Documentation

Storage in XCP-ng is quite a large topic. This section is dedicated to it. Keywords are:

docs.xcp-ng.org

A local SR is using a disk or a partition of your local disk, to create a space for your VM disks. Local LVM will use logical volumes, whereas Local EXT will create an ext4 filesystem and put .vhd files in it.

 

[Octopuss]

I'll try that tomorrow.
The next problem to solve is to figure out how to connect the host to the internet so I can update it and download Xen Orchestra. This looks pretty hopeless. I connected the router with internet access to the server's another NIC, the relevant network got an IP, but that's it. Trying the usual yum upgrade command failed, there's no connection.

 

[acp]

I guess I give up.
[23:16 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-create type=ext4 name-label=localSR-ext4 host-uuid=ee0eaa1a-431d-4681-aba7-0ab00bc0268e device-config:device=/dev/nvme1n1
Error code: SR_BACKEND_FAILURE_1200
Error parameters: , The `ext4` SR type is deprecated since XCP-ng 8.1.
Use the main `ext` driver instead. It will create an EXT4 filesystem now, not EXT3 anymore as it used to.,

Ok, so I did what it asked.
[23:19 XCP-ng ~]# xe sr-create type=ext name-label=localSR-ext4 host-uuid=ee0eaa1a-431d-4681-aba7-0ab00bc0268e device-config:device=/dev/nvme1n1
e35d0552-7c57-bb60-e806-c50ceb3b7be1
But then...
View attachment 34219

Is that a visual bug or why does it say ext3? omg...

that may be an xcp-ng center artifact.

 

[fohdeesha]

dude you are trying way too much and getting way too sidetracked. the default ext formatting is fine, it's default for a reason. for a VM store with a few hundred VHD files max, there is no difference. Tens of thousands of people are using XCP-ng out of the box without issue. Maybe after you've gotten your stuff set up and are more familiar with the ecosystem and add a new drive, you can manually create an ext4 SR. But for now it's going to cause you no end of issues

 

[Octopuss]

Maybe so. But I need to have my stuff perfect.

Also can anyone tell me how to connect the actual host to internet? I need to download the XO.

 

[nabsltd]

View attachment 34219

Is that a visual bug or why does it say ext3? omg...

Likely a visual bug. ext4 is nothing more than ext3 with some extra feature flags...the basic disk structure is the same:

ext4 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Depending on how the GUI tries to get the information, it might just see the "ext3" in the partition table and stop there. To determine if the underlying file system is really ext4, the flags in the superblock need to be examined.