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Re: [Xen-API] grub/cmdline



Ewan Mellor wrote:
[Bringing Tim into the conversation]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 08:10:59PM +0000, John Levon wrote:

What are grub/cmdline's semantics? It appears to be undocumented.

I'm trying to work out what changes are needed for the bootloader changes I'm
making. The current .py changes I'm making after discussion with Tim Deegan
are:
use_bootloader (new: if set, use a bootloader. == 1 is implied if bootloader is
set, or if kernel is not set)
bootloader/bootloader_args (as before, default to pygrub if use_bootloader is
set)

As far as I can work out, if boot_type is 'kernel_internal', then this
corresponds to setting use_bootloader to 1. It's not clear how
bootloader_args is represented in the API - is it?

Currently it seems that 'bootloader' is returned when get_boot_method is
called, but the API docs says it's an enum of boot_type? Well actually it
returns '' now.

I was looking at this again just the other day.  Here's where I got to --
let's see how it fits in with what you've got:


vm has three mutually exclusive groups: "grub", "external", and "hvm", with
the fields

vm.grub.cmdline

vm.external.kernel
vm.external.args
vm.external.initrd

vm.hvm.boot

Grub means "parse the grub config file inside the guest, and boot
appropriately".  grub.cmdline is _supposed_ to be a way of specifying "select
this particular label from the config file" or "append these parameters to the
kernel command line before you boot" or mixtures of the two.  Is that feasible
with one string?

External means "take the specified kernel from dom 0, and give it the given
args and initrd".

HVM means "run hvmloader and boot using a BIOS", with hvm.boot specifying the
order of boot devices.

Kernel_internal is unnecessary.

How does this fit with your thinking?

What about support for other boot loaders? SLES for example uses domUloader. How would this be specified? Although moving forward, particularly with the work John has been doing, I'm thinking we should just be using pygrub. Not sure why we were using domUloader anyway and the person with some context behind this decision is not available ATM.

Jim


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