Re: Fixes to Etch kernel for use in a Xen domain 0
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 10:53:48PM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:
> As I'm sure you know there is no Xen domain 0 kernel present in Lenny. I
> think we are currently recommending that people who require a Xen domain
> 0 stick with the Etch kernel on a Lenny userspace/hypervisor until
> "Lenny and a half" at which point we hope dom0 (and 64 bit) support will
> be in the paravirt ops kernel. (is there consensus on this in the kernel
> team?)
hey Ian!
I'm not aware of any well-formed consensus yet - though there are
several ideas. I'll caveat this by saying I don't follow Xen
development at all, and didn't participate in the previous thread
about this (very busy at the time), but I do think the approach that
would be best for our users is to ship a 2.6.18-based kernel in
lenny - aka, Bastian's Option 5:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00476.html
The problem is that I can pretty much guarantee that I'll not have
time to actively security support this kernel - and as such, we'd need
someone to step up to help with that kernel. I'd be happy to work with
1-2 people to get them up to speed on working with the kernel, share
patches, etc.
> With that in mind what level of updates would we be willing to accept
> into an update of the Etch kernel to make this work?
>
> I'm particularly thinking of
> http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg?rev/c9ac0bace498 which is
> pretty much a pure feature patch but will allow a 64 bit domain 0 to
> speak disk to 32 bit guests. This is quite handy given Lenny only
> supports 32 bit guests...
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=121959036719825
Since its neither a >= important bug for etch, nor obviously safe for
existing installs, I don't think it'd be an option for 'etch'. Its
definitely more suited for the mythological lenny-specific 2.6.18.
> If this is unacceptable (probably?) then are there any other
> options/plans/ideas for providing an updated 2.6.18 domain 0 kernel? I
> hear Bastian has a repo somewhere?
Yeah, he maintains a branch under people/waldi, iirc. Not sure where
the builds are though.
--
dann frazier
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