XenServer 5.6: Kernel update for (paravirtualized) Ubuntu 10.04


I used jansipke’s great tutorial “Installing XenServer Tools on Ubuntu 10.04” to set up a paravirtualized Ubuntu 10.04 guest system (to enable support for the XenServer Tools) on a XenServer 5.6 host system.
Using this technique, it is important to update the host system after a kernel update in the guest system. In the simplest case, this could be achieved by rerunning jansipke’s makepv.sh script.
After installing the new kernel in the guest system, copy the information of the menuentry (usually the topmost) for the new kernel from /boot/grub/grub.cfg. The entry should look as follows:

menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux YOUR-KERNEL' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        recordfail
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,1)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set YOUR-UUID
        linux   /boot/vmlinuz-YOUR-KERNEL root=UUID=YOUR-UUID ro   quiet
        initrd  /boot/initrd.img-YOUR-KERNEL
}

Shut down the guest system and rerun the makepv.sh script for this guest system and paste the required information:

# ./makepv.sh YOUR-VM
[...]
Specify path to Kernel (e.g. /boot/vmlinuz...): /boot/vmlinuz-YOUR-KERNEL
Specify Kernel arguments (root=UUID=... ro quiet): root=UUID=YOUR-UUID ro   quiet
Specify path to ramdisk (e.g. /boot/initrd...): /boot/initrd.img-YOUR-KERNEL
[...]

After restarting the guest system the kernel should be up to date and the system should support paravirtualization as before.

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