Re: [Xen-API] grub/cmdline

[Jim Fehlig <jfehlig@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ewan Mellor wrote:
[snip]
> > 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.
> >     
> What would that take?  As I understand it, domUloader has the same
> semantics as pygrub, in that the guest kernel's permanent home is the
> guest filesystem, and it is booted non-HVM.  Is the difference that domUloader
> doesn't parse the grub configuration?  What does it do instead?
>   
Looks like your latest proposal will support domUloader, i.e.

vm.pv.bootloader
vm.pv.entry
vm.pv.kernel
vm.pv.ramdisk
vm.pv.args

domUloader does get kernel/ramdisk from guest filesystem but does not 
parse the grub configuration, instead relying on input parameters.  E.g. 
a legacy config file entry for domUloader might be
bootloader = '/usr/lib/xen/boot/domUloader.py'
bootentry = 'hda2:/boot/vmlinuz-xen,/boot/initrd-xen'

The bootloader params could be stuffed in vm.pv.entry or sprayed across 
entry, .kernel and .ramdisk.
> I wouldn't mind adding support for domUloader necessarily, but it does
> seem redundant at first glance, so perhaps it would be better for SuSE
> to move to pygrub like you suggest.  In that case, I don't think it's
> worth it to put the fields into the Xen-API.
>   
Well, I wasn't thinking of guests that may not even have grub installed 
like netware.  So we will need to stay with domUloader.
Even for SuSE linux guests it appears domUloader is better approach - at 
least those with reiser fs.  I've been told the user-space tools for 
reiser suck and hence pygrub has never worked well with such images.
Jim


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