How to pass boots args to a Hyper-V VM - hyper-v

I need to add some extra key=value pairs in the /proc/cmdline file of my Linux VM.
On a XenServer hypervisor, I can use XenAPI callVM.set_PV_args
What is the equivalent in Hyper-V 2012?

AFAIK the only way to do this with Hyper-V is to mount the vhd and edit the file.
or, use a virtual floppy (which I don't think will have any effect in your case). This can be done through wmi.
Hyper-V does not have an equivalent to the PV vm of xenserver. Where many of these xenserver pv arguments are simple configuration of a boot file in the settings of the vm, as the vm gets boot strapped from the parent kernel.
if you could do this with a xenserver HVM style Linux vm, then there might be a similar equivalent in Hyper-V.

Related

Mount VHDX within WSL Ubuntu 18.04 to edit Linux files

I'm looking to change a process (which currently is an elevated PowerShell script running in Windows 10, and I want to keep it close to that) I have that currently uses Paragon Linux Filesystem for Windows tool. While it does work, it doesn't work consistently. What I'd like to do instead is to use WSL on Windows 10, 1909 currently (will go to 2004 when available), to mount a VHDX which contains to partitions, /dev/sda1 for /boot, and /dev/sda2 another for an Linux LVM. The OS within this VHDX is CentOS 7.5, and the filesystem I want to modify is formatted in ext4. I need to edit some files within a logical volume within the group.
Currently, I'm running into an issue where qemu-nbd doesn't help, as there doesn't appear to be an NBD kernel mode driver provided by the Microsoft Linux kernel in Ubuntu 18.04 image from the Windows Store. I've tried guestfish (using guestmount), but it is unable to find an operating system and fails to mount any of the volumes.
Is this possible? Am I going down the wrong path, and is this not possible?
As I understand your question...
Seems to me that you want to offline access a .vhdx containing Linux
using powershell to manipulate some files...
(I think the issue here is ext4 and file rights)
1. Mount the .vhdx you want to '''work''' in a linux virtual machine as second disk
2. Install Powershell 7 in linux VM
3. Configure Powershell remote in the Linux VM (via SSH)
4. Access the Linux VM from Windows Powershell 7 and execute your scripts.
there are other ways using VMs+NBD or using WSL and mounted
drives... but this seems to be the most practical end efficient!
as you for sure know you can start/stop the VMs from Powershell

Can Vagrant suffice my requirement?

I have been looking out for ways to setup an automation environment and I found this application named Vagrant. I read the docs on the site, however I wanted to know from the experts out there if Vagrant with Oracle VirtualBox would suffice my needs.
I need to have a script that will call Vagrant to initialize a VM [The VM-Image is always the same - Windows Server 2008 R2]
I need to copy some of my project related files from a shared location onto the VM
Call a Batch file that will take care of test runs for me inside the VM
Once my test run is complete, This VM needs to be self destroyed/destructed.
Also, I would like to know if the Image be a custom .ISO file?
Sounds like Vagrant and VirtualBox will work for that scenario. Also, you might find that running commands in the VM using WinRM or SSH may be the easiest way to launch tests.
If you haven't already seen it, the blog post about Windows support in Vagrant 1.6 is informative: https://www.vagrantup.com/blog/feature-preview-vagrant-1-6-windows.html
Creating a VirtualBox/Vagrant base VM from an .iso should work, and you can then do all of your work using the VM from that point onward.
To get started, you might try these steps:
Create a VirtualBox VM from your Windows .iso, using the VirtualBox GUI or cmdline tools.
Once you have the VM in the state you want it, shut it down and package it as a vagrant box - for example, on a Mac that step looks like (where Win7x64 is the dir containing the VirtualBox VM):
cd ~/VirtualBox\ VMs
vagrant package --base Win7x64 --output win7x64_base.box
Once that finishes, tell vagrant about the new base box:
vagrant box add win7x64_base /path/to/win7_base.box
Then you can vagrant init/vagrant up the VM:
mkdir win7 && cd win7
vagrant init win7x64
vagrant up
To enable SSH access, I installed Cygwin in the VM and configured sshd. So, after launching you can SSH in by running vagrant ssh
Note that if there's no Windows user in the VM named 'vagrant', you can specify the SSH username to use with vagrant ssh by placing this in your Vagrantfile:
config.ssh.username = 'user1'
As mentioned above, WinRM is also an option for remotely running commands.
And Vagrant apparently has some convenience features to make it easy to RDP into the VM, but I haven't looked at that.

is it possible to install ESXi on linux?

ESXi installs on a physical machine separately. I mean it's not a software which installs on an OS like a Linux machine. Am I right?
I need something like ESXi server to be installed on a CentOS 5 physical machine.
What's your suggestion?
ESXi is a Hypervisor which installs directly onto hardware. Its almost like a mini OS if you like, so you can't install that on Linux. Software which will provide virtualization on top on the OS will be the likes of KVM, Xen or VirtualBox which would be better suited for you (sounds like it anyway)
Have a look at this link

How could I give KVM more hard disk space

I want to use Kvm as hypervisor, but it is difficult. Is says that I don't have space on the node, that is not true.
How could I solve this big problem? http://prntscr.com/2rlcq1
Your question is not clear. First of all you can install Kvm only in a bare-metal physical machine. Though it comes with a linux distribution but it's a hypervisor so it runs directly on the hardware.
Next you have to enable the processor virtualization extension that is Intel-VT/VT-x or AMD-v from bios.
Then only you can install Kvm.

Automate CentOS installation with VMware for testing

Is is possible to automate the installation of an OS using VMware or any other virtualization product?
One of our products consists of a customized version of CentOS that installs the OS and our application on a server. It's much like any CentOS/RHEL installation where you choose a mode that corresponds to different kickstart options, and then you choose your keyboard type. The rest of the installation is automatic.
What I'd like to have is an automated system that will create a new guest VM, boot it with the ISO image of our product, start the installation (including choosing the keyboard), wait for the reboot, and then launch a set of automated tests.
I know that there are plenty of ways to automate the creation of new VM guests from existing templates/images, and I know you can use the VIX API to interact with virtual machines, but the VIX API seems to require that VMware tools is already running (which won't be the case when you're booting from the CentOS install disk).
This answer (Automating VMWare or VirtualPC) indicates that you can script VMware to boot from an ISO that does an unattended installation, but I would really like to test the same process that our customers will be using.
Another option might be to use Xen's fully-virtualized mode and see if scripting it over the serial port will work.
TIA,
Jason
I have a very very similar question, it is on superuser:
https://superuser.com/questions/36047/moving-vmware-os-image-as-primary-os-on-a-system
You can also use VirtualBox instead of VMWare. The VirtualBox SDK allows you to directly control the keyboard, the mouse the serial port and the parallel port of the guest without the virtualbox guest tools installed.
Unfortunately it doesn't offer a text console interface but the serial port can be connected to a local pipe file and that can probably be worked with just as well.
This may not be exactly what you need:
I have done something similar with a Ubuntu-based install. We used preseeding (Debian's form of kickstart), to answer all the questions during the install - providing the preseed file and the installer via tftp.
In addition to the official Ubuntu mirror we added the apt-server with our own packages in the preseed file. We put a .deb version of vmware-tools on the apt-server and added it to the packages to be installed.
The .deb of vmware tools just contained the .tar.gz and a postinstall script that would extract it to /tmp and run the vmware install script (which has a switch to be run unnattended, so it does not ask any questions).
So after the reboot vmware-tools were up and running and we could use vix to script the rest (which was not very reliable).
If you should encounter problems with running vmware-config.pl during boot, you could make a custom package that just extracts the tools and an init script that installs them on first boot, disables itself and reboots.
Maybe you can use this strategy (replacing apt by yum, preseed by kickstart and tftp by a remastered iso). If you really need to test that your users choose a keyboard in the installer (which is not very different from kickstart) this would obviously not work for you..