Infrastructure Software

Hi folks,

we're having a problem here: We have installed the latest version of Oracle VM Server on a machine that does not provide hardware virtualization support (i.e., no Intel VT or similar). As a result, we will not be able to make use of hardware virtualized VMs, but according to the Oracle docs, we should be able to set up virtual machines of the paravirtualized domain type. So far, so good.

Also according to the docs, when setting up a PVM, one cannot use an ISO image located in a storage repository in order to start the installation, but instead one would have the mount the installation ISO somewhere, make available it's contents via NFS (or HTTP / FTP), and then set up the newly created virtual machine to attempt a PXE boot, specifying the location where the contents of the ISO have been placed (i.e.: nfs:host:/path/to/mounted/iso). All of this is decribed very well in the Oracle VM Server docs (chapter 8), but somehow it still doesn't seem to work for us.

What happens is this: When we attempt to boot our PVM via PXE, specifying the NFS location where we've made the contents of the ISO available, we always get this:

---
Job Construction Phase
----------------------
begin()
Appended operation 'Virtual Machine Start' to object '0004fb0000060000ab1b8caa045cc7a8 (VMOEL6)'.
commit()
Completed Step: COMMIT

Objects and Operations
----------------------
Object (IN_USE): [VirtualMachine] 0004fb0000060000ab1b8caa045cc7a8 (VMOEL6)
Operation: Virtual Machine Start
Object (IN_USE): [Vnic] 0004fb0000070000797b4c17ae1154dd (00:21:f6:00:00:0a)
Object (IN_USE): [StorageElement] 0004fb0000180000eb569988de92923e (SATA_WDC_WD5001ABYS-_WD-WCAS86231834)
Object (IN_USE): [VirtualDisk] 0004fb0000120000cdbce172d90322c3.img (VMOEL6Disk1)
Object (IN_USE): [VmDiskMapping] 0004fb0000130000aaa3f5eb57705a5b
Object (IN_USE): [VmDiskMapping] 0004fb0000130000f1438eedcfee01de

Job Running Phase at 18:11 on Fri, Oct 14, 2011
----------------------------------------------
Job Participants: [44:45:4c:4c:37:00:10:46:80:4b:b8:c0:4f:59:31:4a (ORAVM1)]


Actioner
--------
Starting operation 'Virtual Machine Start' on object '0004fb0000060000ab1b8caa045cc7a8 (VMOEL6)'
Job Internal Error (Operation)com.oracle.ovm.mgr.api.exception.FailedOperationException: OVMAPI_4010E Attempt to send command: dispatch to server: ORAVM1 failed. OVMAPI_4004E Server Failed Command: dispatch https://?uname?:?pwd?@10.0.0.4:8899/api/1 start_vm 0004fb00000300001d1619c621b16838 0004fb0000060000ab1b8caa045cc7a8, Status: org.apache.xmlrpc.XmlRpcException: exceptions.RuntimeError:Command: ['xm', 'create', '/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300001d1619c621b16838/VirtualMachines/0004fb0000060000ab1b8caa045cc7a8/vm.cfg'] failed (1): Error: Boot loader didn't return any data!
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We've used multiple different ISOs in order to test this, including Oracle Enterprise Linux (just like the example in the docs does), however, we never get any further than this error message.

Any ideas what we might be doing wrong?

Greetings,
Nils