Problem starting VM (Error: (2,

Sometimes the following error is seen:

Error: (2, 'Invalid kernel', 'xc_dom_parse_elf_kernel: ELF image has no shstrtab\n')

If you receive the this error in the startup log for a VM it means a non-Xen kernel is trying to boot. On older distributions they required a special Xen kernel, for example on CentOS 5.x it is named kernel-xen.

Below are the steps to fix.

1) Startup VM in Recovery

2) Mount VM filesystem in the recovery mode: mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

3) Edit grub configuration to boot a -xen kernel. Grub configuration file will be /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

4) Once Xen kernel is chosen Reboot from our control panel and VM will boot normally.