Re: [Xen-devel] What is the current state of Dom0 kernel support?

[Dennis Krul <dweazle@xxxxxxxxx>]

I guess we' re in the same boat. These are my experiences so far:

Based on the discussions on LKML and xen-devel I believe it's highly unlikely the code for dom0 support will make it in mainline any time soon, if ever. 

There are several git trees here and there, but none of them is both stable and up-to-date (or even actively maintained).

Michael Young maintains dom0 packages for Fedora. Although I appreciate
his work, his kernels are not stable enough for production use. These packages are not in the main repositories (http://fedorapeople.org/~myoung/dom0/)

OpenSUSE has a kernel-xen package in factory that's based on 2.6.30, but development of this package is happening behind closed doors. I'd like to see a more public effort to create a stable dom0 kernel instead of relying on (and trusting) the work of others.

So in my opinion what needs to happen is create a new tracking branch for mainline, apply all the patches that are not being accepted upstream, and work from there to get something that's stable. It should not be too difficult to keep tracking mainline and release dom0 kernels as new vanilla kernels come out.

That's ofcourse easier said then done. There will be merge conflicts and other issues. It will take quite some time to keep track of all patches, test them, make packages, and so on. It's obviously not something you can do by your own. But I have the feeling there are enough people on this list able and willing to help out. If we concentrate our efforts I believe we can make something happen.

Ideally, some core Xen hackers would support this effort, but even if they don't (due to time constraints or for whatever reason), I believe we can pull this off. 

So I was kind of wondering: Do you think this might work? And who would be willing to help out? You don't need to be a hardcore kernel hacker (I'm not), but one or two people with in depth kernel knowledge might come in handy sometimes :). Hosting will not be a problem (I can provide a dedicated VPS, everyone who wants to help can get commit and/or shell access, whatever we need to make this work).

We have 2 people (myself included) who can help out. Anyone else? :)

-- 
Dennis Krul <dweazle@xxxxxxxxx>

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