If you have selected the minimal install option you might be surprised by just how minimal it is; one example is that the ifconfig command is not available. The command yum install ifconfig doesn’t work – it’s part of another broader package. We can find out which one that is by running:
yum provides ifconfig
Through that we can see that the net-tools package installs it. Run:
yum install net-tools
…and you should be able to now use ifconfig.
While it is unsupported, it can sometimes be quite handy to install additional packages on your XenServer 6.2 system – things like vim, iptraf, perhaps even denyhosts. By default extra packages you wish to install are likely disabled, but using yum we can temporarily allow access to the CentOS packages. Logging in as root and using yum we can:
yum –enablerepo=base –disablerepo=citrix install [packagename]
yum –enablerepo=base –disablerepo=citrix install denyhosts
To install a package on Fedora via the command line, we use the yum command like so:
yum install [package]
Using tmux as an example:
yum install tmux
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package tmux.x86_64 0:1.8-3.fc20 will be installed
–> Finished Dependency ResolutionDependencies Resolved
===========================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===========================================
Installing:
tmux x86_64 1.8-3.fc20 fedora 243 kTransaction Summary
===========================================
Install 1 PackageTotal download size: 243 k
Installed size: 558 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]:
You can see that the yum command provides some useful information about the package you have asked it to install. If you are happy with the information provided you can install with “y” or cancel with “n”.
We were asked this today – we have found that the “Other Media” works fine for installation and use, where other options (Red Hat options, for example) don’t work.
With the recent public availability of XenServer 6.2 there are an increasing number of people wanting to try it; here is a walk-through of an install so that you know what to expect if you want to try it yourself. In this example we are using a NFS datastore on the network to store VM files. First, burn the ISO installer to a CD and boot to it:
For those who don’t want to use Solaris or FreeBSD as their ZFS platform Ubuntu now seems a valid option; installation is now relatively straightforward. Please note, though, that you should be running a 64-bit system – ZFS on Ubuntu is not stable on a 32-bit system. Open up a terminal and enter the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zfs-native/stable sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ubuntu-zfs
…and that’s it! From here you can begin to use the filesystem by creating a pool or importing an existing pool. Many people find Ubuntu an easier system to manage compared to Solaris or FreeBSD so it’s good news that it now appears to be a stable implementation, despite being technically a release candidate.