Re: [PATCH/RFC] Enable Xen PVHVM installation from ISO
Does anybody have any comments on this RFC?
On Sun, 2011-02-20 at 22:12 +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the Squeeze release we added support for Xen PV installation from
> certain ISO images which have the Xen variant enabled in Debian CD (the
> multiarch x86 ISOs) which includes a suitable installer image as well as
> the kernel binaries (686-bigmem flavour on i386).
>
> Since then the kernel has grown additional functionality which allows
> the PV drivers to be used for disk and network in an HVM (fully
> virtualised) guest, in Xen-land we call this PVHVM.
>
> For various reasons this PVHVM support is contingent on Xen PV support
> also being enabled in the kernel and hence it is limited to the
> 686-bigmem flavour on i386 as well. Long term we hope to address this
> but I don't think it will happen too soon...
>
> The following patches to d-i and debian-cd add a menu item to the
> isolinux menu for images with the Xen variant enabled e.g. it simply
> creates an entry for images when the appropriate installer + kernel is
> already present anyway.
>
> I think manually duplicating the entire non-Xen menu hierarchy by hand
> would be a terrible idea, and although I think I could probably make
> something work automatically by processing the existing cfg files (e.g.
> with sed or something) I suspect the result would be rather fragile, so
> I've just implemented the basic install menu item for 32 and 64 bit.
> Anyone got any cunning ideas on how to do this better?
>
> Any opinions on where to put the Xen toplevel menu etc? I put it in the
> first screen but I could see an argument for putting it under advanced
> for example.
>
> Ian.
>
> PS: Is there some trick to quickly testing the isolinux menus? I've been
> doing:
> #!/bin/sh
>
> set -ex
>
> export PATH=util:${PATH}:/usr/sbin:/sbin
>
> rm -rf tmp/cdrom_isolinux/cd_info tmp/cdrom_gtk/cd_info
> make SUBARCH= MEDIUM=cdrom FLAVOUR=isolinux dest/cdrom/debian-cd_info.tar.gz
>
> ARCH=`dpkg --print-architecture`
>
> cp -v dest/cdrom/debian-cd_info.tar.gz ~/development/debian/debian-installer/dest/${ARCH}/cdrom/debian-cd_info.tar.gz
> for both amd64 and i386 and then rebuilding a BC image against that
> installer, which takes several minutes and is a bit fiddly.
>
--
Ian Campbell
Current Noise: Lair Of The Minotaur - Blood From The WItch's Vein
Killing is stupid; useless!
-- McCoy, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
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