Xen Linux kernels are unsupported

Products

• VMware
• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

VMware does not support Xen Linux kernels as a guest operating system.

This article provides information on:

• What to do when installing guest operating systems that install a Xen Linux kernel
• What to do if the guest operating system is already installed
• What to do if you convert a Linux PC and receive the following error:
  
  KeepOneBootEntry: There is no matching kernel modules for kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-164.el5

Resolution

Some Linux operating system distributions install a Xen Linux kernel by default (such as RHEL 5, CentOS 5, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core 7 and higher). In these cases, deselect the Virtualization option during the installation of these operating systems. Disabling the Virtualization option ensures that a supported kernel is installed.

If the guest operating system is already installed, select the right kernel from the GRUB prompt to boot into the non-virtualization kernel.

Alternatively, if you are familiar with editing the menu.lst file, you can edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to comment the Virtualization kernel from booting.

Note: Take a backup of menu.lst file before editing, In-appropriate edit may cause the OS to corrupt. For more information on how to edit boot options in menu.lst, see your Linux distribution documentation.

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: Xen Linux カーネルがサポートされていない (2080695)
• 简体中文: 不支持 Xen Linux 内核 (2078317)