Library - Xen - How-to - Boot process configuration

Modify your /boot.cfg file so that it looks like this one here (in particular, DO NOT insert a space before the word "load" or else the boot process will fail); the two changes are the addition of the final "menu=" line and an altered "default=" line:

menu=Boot normally:boot netbsd
menu=Boot single user:boot netbsd -s
menu=Disable ACPI:boot netbsd -2
menu=Disable ACPI and SMP:boot netbsd -12
menu=Drop to boot prompt:prompt
menu=Boot Xen 3.3:load /netbsd-XEN3_DOM0 console=pc;multiboot /xen.gz dom0_mem=2048M
default=6
timeout=5

Be mindful of the amount of memory assigned to Dom0 (as underlined above), and make sure it's the correct amount for your configuration.  As of the time of this writing, there is a 2 GB (2,048 MB) limit imposed by a crashing problem that shows up under heavy disk I/O when Dom0 has more than 2 GBs of RAM assigned to it (DomUs are unaffected by this limit, and the 32-bit HVM DomUs can have a full 4 GBs assigned to them regardless of how much is assigned to your Dom0).

Also, regarding the amount of memory actually needed, NetBSD and Xen don't need very much (certainly not 2 GBs).  The main reasons we allocate 2 GBs on our systems is that we have the extra unused RAM available to use, and because we prefer to operate with more RAM in case we need it.

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