Jailtime.org CentOS 5.2 on Xen; Boot Problem

A non-booting DomU is a standard problem to have with Xen; over the years I’ve seen it happen mainly due to console or hwclock problems. This one, however, stumped me – first time debugging it in Xen > 3.0.x, after all.

Basically, my CentOS 5.2 DomU refused to boot, stalling out after initializing SSH. Interactive mode showed it was freezing on starting the local service, or at least shortly afterward – no and continue options had the same result.

The following had to be shoved into the config file for the DomU, and replaced my ‘console=hvc0′ declaration:

extra ="3 xencons=tty"

The solution comes from this message: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2009-04/msg00485.html