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.