[clug] Interesting XEN Problem

[Troy Heland]

Good Morning CLUG,

I have a rather interesting issue surrounding XEN.  Bear with me as I try to
explain.

Background:  I have recently taken over at my workplace and this issue
existed well before I was here.

We have a SLES XEN Host running 2 VM's.

The VM's are running fine and are rather important.  The host server however
is not running fine!

On the console (Of the host server) the last line says:

"loading keymap qwerty/us.map.gz"

Above this it also states that SSH is running.

There is no command line available.  (Its just a blank line that I can type
at will in to no avail)  If I attempt to SSH to the machine I get
"ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host" before it
asks for a password.

ssh -vv <IP address> gives me:

OpenSSH_4.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8a 11 Oct 2005
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to <ip address> [<IP Address>] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: permanently_set_uid: 0/0
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/identity type -1
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/id_dsa type -1


In effect I cannot access the host server at all.  (Unless I restart the
server (Which I haven't done as I am concerned the VM's might not come
back... Yes they are being backed up and yes I could restore them to
somewhere else however this involves vendors and significant costs which I
would rather avoid))

Before you say "Why do you need to access the host server?" The answer is 'I
don't really need to.  But not having access to it, at all, is making me a
little nervous!'

Can anyone suggest a way I could gain access to this server without bringing
down the guests?

Cheers

Troy.