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In order to boot and run a Xen guest domain a key requirement (amongst other items) is a root filesystem populated with the files and directories necessary for the guest operating system to function. One of the most flexible Xen configurations involves the installation of the root filesystem on an NFS server such that it can be accessed and booted on a client system. This approach is of particular use when the need to migrate Xen domainU guests from one host to another arises. Since both the original host and the target host to which the guest is migrating need access to the domainU's root filesystem, NFS provides an ideal mechanism for achieving this by allowing the root filesystem located on the NFS server to be mounted on both client hosts.
In order to boot a Xen guest domain with an NFS mounted root filesystem a version of the Linux kernel with root NFS root filesystem support is required. Unfortunately this functionality is not enabled by default in most standard kernels. It is necessary, therefore, to build a custom kernel with this capability enabled. In this tutorial we will work through an example of building a custom CentOS 5.1 kernel with NFS root filesystem support.
== Obtaining the Kernel Sources ==
