Rob’s Blog

Installing SuSE Enterprise Linux 10 SP2 x64 on Hyper-V

Well, it’s been a while since I posted anything here, mainly due to the stresses of work and also not really having anything interesting to say. Anyways, as part of a project here I’ve had to work with Linux over the last week or so - so here’s how I went about installing SuSE Enterprise Linux on Hyper-V.

I’ve been impressed with Microsoft’s Hyper-V over the last few weeks. In its RC1 form it works pretty well - I’ve not experienced any problems with it whatsoever. I’m still not 100% moving it into full production yet - our Hyper-V box here is in production, but only for some non-critical machines - but I’m assured that the final version is not far away at all. Admittedly, even when using SCVMM 2008 it’s not quite up there with VMware’s VI3 platform - but then again you’re not paying thousands of pounds for it.

Anyway I digress. The point is I’m using Hyper-V and if you’re reading this page you are too. First up, you’ll need to grab a copy of SuSE. Get it from here. Next, you will need the Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V, which are available from the Microsoft Connect site (here).

So now you have all the bits and pieces you need. Great! Let’s get started on installing your SuSE installation. First up, create your Hyper-V server. I created myself a new LUN on my SAN with enough space for the disk, some snapshots and the memory save file - about 85Gb in total. My SuSE installation needs about 1Gb of RAM and 60Gb disk space, so there we go, it has it, simple enough. Attach your freshly downloaded SuSE ISO sa the installation media and off we go!

Everything went smoothly at first - however I ran into two small issues. Firstly, remember that you can’t use the mouse through a Terminal Services session. I forgot this and as SuSE’s installer is graphical, caused me a little bit of frustration. Okay not a huge amount - I just had to get off my arse and stand at the server’s console whilst I was doing the install, but hey, my chair is comfy and our server room isn’t. Secondly, my server’s screen resolution is only 1024×768. Sorry, I really didn’t think our server room needed anything more than the most basic of screens to do console management tasks. However this does cause problems with Hyper-V as it seems to default to 1280×1024 resolution. So, during the install, there was a lot of fiddling about with the CTRL+ALT+Left Arrow key combination, which was fun on our tiny little server keyboard.

Anyway, minor issues, nothing show-stopping. Running through the SuSE install was pretty straight forward. I chose all the defaults, apart from one - and this is important, unless you want to add them later through the SuSE Install Manager later - change the Software setting from it’s default and just add the C/C++ Development Tools. Now you’ll have to wait a while whilst your partitions get formatted and software gets installed. Go grab a coffee, your favourite soft drink or a cool refreshing beer to keep yourself occupied whilst the progress bar rattles along. It really doesn’t take long but remember this is all down to how quick your underlying storage is for Hyper-V.

Anyways after a reboot the system comes back up. Great! You’re asked for a root password, to choose the hostname and to configure networking. For networking I didn’t enable the NetworkManager applet (I found I had issues with it later) but I did enable VNC remote administration. Note to self: test this actually works! I then went through the CA creation leaving the defaults and didn’t create a ‘normal’ user (bad practice I know, but one is going to get created later anyway as part of our application install so I didn’t lose too much sleep over it). Next up - yay! A screen where I can change my resolution to something comfortable! I modified this to tell Linux I had a 15" screen running at 1024×768 - tested with absolutely no issues. A quick CTRL-ALT-BREAK key combo and I’m working comfortably, full-screen, on my Linux box. Let the box reboot…

And vóila! You’re presented with a login box. Tap in root as the username and then enter the password you chose earlier and you’re in. Okay, now you have a couple of extra things to do. First of all, go to the Install Manager (Computer button in the bottom right corner -> System -> Install Software) and do a search for kernel-source. Install the only package it finds. This may need a reboot; it may not. It didn’t the first time I did it but did the second time. Why? I don’t know, ask Novell. Anyways, once this has finished, go back into the Install Manager and do a search for kernel-xen. Why not do these both at the same time I hear you cry? Well, I tried that and it broke, so I’d recommend doing them separately.

Next up it’s time to install the integration components. First off to say I had some issues mounting and unmounting CDs - I found the most reliable method to be to eject the media from within the SuSE guest and then mount the new em>Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V ISO (called simply LinuxIC.iso) in Hyper-V manager. This worked well for me. You can then browse to /media and copy the CDROM folder to a location of your choice. I copied it to the root (/) drive and then renamed it LinuxIC. Open up a terminal (if you haven’t done the copy through one already) and do a cd to your chosen folder (in my case /LinuxIC) and then execute the following command:

cd /LinuxIC
./setup.pl x2v /boot/grub/menu.lst

You’ll need to reboot the machine after running this command. Anyway, upon reboot, log in again, open another terminal and type the following:

cd /LinuxIC
./setup.pl drivers

This will run for a while. Once it’s finished (it’ll dump you back at a $ prompt) do a reboot again. Pain, I know, but it’s the most reliable way to get things sorted. After a final reboot you’ll notice things seem a little quicker and you can then start to add a network card. This is really straightforward - Click on Computer in the bottom right corner, go to the System part and choose Configure Networking. I found using the NetworkManager applet didn’t work, but using the ifup method worked perfectly. After configuring your network parameters you should now have a Linux guest with all synthetic drivers loaded!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Linux, Virtualisation. Find similar posts by selecting any of the following tags: . 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.