Example: How to Install and Boot a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 PV Guest on an OpenSolaris 2009.06 dom0

The following sequence of commands installs a Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest over NFS using the text installer:

# mount -F hsfs /rhel.iso /mnt
# share -o ro /mnt
# virt-install -n pv-rhel -r 1024 -l nfs:mydom0:/mnt \
 --os-type=linux os-variant=rhel5.3 \
 -f /dev/zvol/dsk/pv-rhel.zvol -p --nographics

The following command installs a Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest using the media in the dom0 optical drive (CD-ROM/DVD) , utilizing the RedHat Linux version 5 kickstart feature to automate the installation process.

# virt-install  \
        --name rhat \
        --ram 500 \
        --file /dev/zvol/dsk/rhat.zvol \
        --paravirt \
        --location /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2 \
        --os-type=linux os-variant=rhel5 \
        --extra-args "ks=/export/install/rhat/ks.cfg

Because of a standard Linux restriction that PV guests cannot be installed from a CD, the CD must be mounted in a location (usually dom0) exported over NFS, and then an NFS Linux installation done. Often it is much easier to do an HTTP Linux install.