Compile FreeNAS 9.2 with Xen Support

This repository is a copy of the FreeNAS 9.2.0-RELEASE branch with the changes outlined by the below two posts.

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/how-i-got-a-xenhvm-kernal-and-xen-tools-working-in-freenas.15287/ http://mywiredhouse.net/blog/building-freenas-xen-pvhvm-support/

Preface

Initially, I installed a FreeBSD 9.2 machine on my XenServer to perform the below steps but it somehow failed due to some wired errors with the "ataidle" port. Eventually I succeeded by using a FreeBSD 9.2 instance on Amazon EC2. In the light of this, I recommend using an Amazon EC2 instance (i.e. FreeBSD on EC2) if you encounter wired build issues. Therefore the instructions below presume that EC2 is used.

Steps to Compile

Go to http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/ and get a FreeBSD 9.2 64x machine.
- I recommend to use the instance size m3.xlarge as it has just enough memory so it won't use the swap.
- Give this instance 10GB for the main disk.
- Add an additional disk/ EBS volume of 20GB.
- Generate a new pem file so it will be straight forward to connect to the instance.
On EC2 boot the FreeBSD 9.2 instance and connect via SSH by using the pem file.
- Note: Amazon provides an SSH command to copy and paste. Make sure you change it to use the user name ec2-user rather than root! Otherwise you won't be able to connect.
Switch to root
```
$ su root
```
Check the /var/log/messages file to figure out what device name the second disk has. In my instance it was xbd5
```
$ tail -n 1000 /var/log/messages | grep "Virtual Block Device"
```

Enable ZFS and create a ZFS pool

$ echo 'zfs_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
$ service zfs start
$ zpool create ZFSPool /dev/xbd5
$ cd /ZFSPool/

Create a new directory on your ZFS volume
```
$ mkdir /ZFSPool/myfreenasbuild
```
To prevent that network problems botch your machine, while installing ports and more importantly while compiling, use screen (see details here).
```
$ pkg_add -r screen
```
Start screen and then hit enter. If your terminal connection drops now, you don't need to worry as it will not break the compilation.
```
$ screen
```
Run the following commands to create a build environment. Note: There are a few dependencies for this, but just accept the defaults as it goes and you’ll be right.
```
$ portsnap fetch extract
$ pkg_add -r git
$ pkg_add -r cdrtools
$ pkg_add -r pxz
$ pkg_add -r screen
```
Change into the build directory on your ZFS volume

$ cd mkdir /ZFSPool/myfreenasbuild

Download the repository

$ git clone -b xenserver https://github.com/topler/freenas-9.2-xen.git

Change into the downloaded directory

$ cd freenas-9.2-xen

Make external

$ make git-external

Build

$ make release

If you used a m3.xlarge instance size, the entire process will take just over 4 hours. If the build was successful, you should have the *.iso and *.img files located under /ZFSPool/myfreenasbuild/freenas-9.2-xen/release_stage/

Steps to Convert Image

Download the contents of the release_stage directory onto your local machine (e.g SCP)
On your local machine, extract the FreeNAS-9.2.0-RELEASE-xen-x64.img.xz file

Convert the img to raw

$ qemu-img convert -O raw FreeNAS-9.2.0-RELEASE-xen-x64.img FreeNAS-9.2.0-RELEASE-xen-x64.raw

Use the vhd-tool to convert it to vhd. Note: Compiling vhd-tool is not straight forward. So if you have a Windows machine at hand, simply use the vhd-tool provided by Microsoft (i.e. vhdtool)
Import the resulting vhd file onto your XenServer.

Known Issues

Due to some bugs with the FreeBSD xen-tools;

Shutdown will only halt the machine rather than powering it off.
Suspend will successfully suspend, but when resumed it causes the machine to reboot.

quater/freenas-9.2-xen

Compile FreeNAS 9.2 with Xen Support

Preface

Steps to Compile

Steps to Convert Image

Known Issues