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Debian Kernel: Xen-fb-frontend as a module?



Hello all

 

I'm starting to generate some Jessie images for AWS EC2 (Xen HVM), and notice that the current 3.14+59 has the xen-fb-frontend compiled in as a driver and not as a loadable module. This driver is causing a hang during boot time, delaying boot for 25 seconds:

 

[    6.064100] xenbus_probe_frontend: Waiting for devices to initialise: 25s...20s...15s...10s...5s...0s...
[   30.968494]
[   30.969632] xenbus_probe_frontend: Timeout connecting to device: device/vfb/0 (local state 3, remote state 1)
[   30.974037] xenbus_probe_frontend: Device with no driver: device/vbd/51712
[   30.976938] xenbus_probe_frontend: Device with no driver: device/vif/0

 

I note that Arch Linux strips out this Xen driver for HVM images (removing it from initrd):

https://www.uplinklabs.net/projects/arch-linux-on-ec2/

 

I also saw on Ubuntu this bug that may be related:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libvirt/+bug/973529

 

From the Arch approach, they have this driver as a module, and thus can disable it for HVM, however, as its currently compiled into the Debian kernel, I can't see a way to disable it. My choices I see right now are:

1) Live with the boot delay an stick with main Debian amd64 kernel

2) Compile a custom kernel to remove this module for HVM images

3) See if moving this module from compile-in to loadable module for the kernel is appropriate - in which case I'll file a bug report.

 

It appears that Ubuntu is not suffering this with 3.13.0-29-generic:
[    0.989639] xenbus_probe_frontend: Device with no driver: device/vfb/0
[    0.993077] regulator-dummy: disabling

And that they are using this drievr as a module:

CONFIG_XEN_FBDEV_FRONTEND=m

 

Would love to get this group's thoughts on this.

 

Thanks,

  James

PS: Please CC me as I am not currently subscribed to debian-kernel.

 

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