Ubuntu as PV domU on XenServer

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Install

Within XenServer Create a new VM using the "Other Install Media".
Choose an Ubuntu amd64 ISO, i386 ISO's don't seem to work.
NOTE: XenServer 5.5 doesn't support booting from the ext4 file system! During the install process make sure to format the / partition as ext3 or create a separate /boot partition formatted as ext3 so that XenServer can access the boot images.

Make sure to enable OpenSSH either during the install or upon first boot. After the install is finished, boot the new VM. If you didn't enable SSH access during install, now is the time to do it:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Modifications to the Guest OS

We need to create console for Xen, the easiest way to do this is to copy tty1.conf to hvc0.conf

Duplicate /etc/init/tty1.conf

cd /etc/init
sudo cp tty1.conf hvc0.conf

Do an inline find and replace with sed

sudo sed -i 's/tty1/hvc0/g' hvc0.conf

Graphical Console

The "Desktop" and "Alternate" distributions of Ubuntu boot into X11/Gnome. In order to access the Gnome session from XenCenter (rather than the CLI console) you need to enable VNC on Ubuntu and setup gdm to call vnc on display 0.

NOTE: Most tutorials involving gdm/VNC involve setting up xinetd, but if you have any packages that require openbsd-inetd (like LTSP) then you cannot install xinetd. Here is a link for running vnc as a service from openbsd-inetd.