Re: [Xen-devel] Run X in other domains?

[Sean Atkinson <sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I've been looking into Xen's status recently, and trying to run X from a
non-privileged domain.  I'd got as far as Mark reported when I found his
old post on the mailing list, so thought I'd reply to this thread.
However I didn't find any follow ups after Ian's response, so I presume
there have been no developments for a while.

Initially I made some progress with the pre-built kernel binaries (from
the current 2.0.5 release).  The xenU kernel lacks PCI support, and X
reports "Cannot open /dev/tty0" using it in domain 1.  I switched to the
xen0 kernel for PCI support, and then X reported "Cannot find a free
VT".

The output from lspci lists everything but the VGA card in domain 0,
unless "lspci -H 1" is used.  In other domains, lspci reports only the
VGA card and "lspci -H 1" reports "You need to be root to have access to
I/O ports".  However X still starts OK in domain 0, which surprised my.
I've confirmed that "xm dmesg" includes "Hiding PCI device 01:00.0 from
DOM0" after passing "physdev_dom0_hide=01:00.1" to Xen.

I've followed Ian's advice, rebuilding Linux 2.6.10 with the default
xenU configuration eith XEN_PHSDEV_ACCESS added (to automatically enable
DUMMY_CONSOLE) plus PCI support.  However my kernel crashes immediately
after "Freeing unused kernel memory", even when I pass "xencons=ttyS".
Perhaps the build broke somehow, or it's configuration is invalid?

My domain config file looks like this:

kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-xenU-mod"
memory = 128
name = "whitebox"
disk = [ 'phy:hda6,hda6,w' ]
root = "/dev/hda6 ro"
extra = "1 xencons=ttyS"
pci = [ '01,00,00' ]

Does anybody have any experience with X in other domains, or thoughts on
how I might proceed please?

Cheers,

Sean.


On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 09:02 +0100, Ian Pratt wrote: 
> > Trying out the various possibilities of Xen, I found a way to boot a
> > second domain with my secondary graphics and usb cards.In the second 
> > machine, the devices show up exactly as expected when using
> > lspci and lsusb, and cat /dev/mouse0 shows that the mouse generates
> > correct output.
> 
> Excellent, glad to hear it. Please could you post your config
> file as an example.
> 
> > So I decided to try and boot X within this machine, and adapted my X
> > config to match the PCI id of the second card, and use my USB mouse and
> > keyboard.However, when I try to startup X, it complains about being unable 
> > to
> > access a free tty...I had not honestly thought that this would instantly 
> > work, so it is not
> > really a surprise that it fails. However, this seems to me a bit of a
> > strange message, since obviously I am on tty1 of the machine, and it
> > should be able to start when I use 'vt1' as a start parameter, or am I
> > mistaken here?
> 
> I'm not really sure how things work with multiple graphics cards,
> but I presume one of them is initialised by the BIOS as the
> primary VGA device. I guess you've built the dom0 kernel with VGA
> support and it's using that as it's console.
> 
> Although the dom1 kernel can see the graphics card, you
> presumably don't build it with VGA console support because
> otherwise it would fight with dom0 for the single BIOS VGA
> console.
> 
> In dom1, you're probably having xencons register as tty1 and are
> using that as a console. It's not a VT, so I can see why X
> complains if that's what it's looking for. It presumably wants a
> VT so that it can play nice with other VGA text consoles.  I
> wander if it's possible to tell X just to go for it anyway?
> 
> If not, how about building dom1 with VT support but with the
> DUMMY console driver rather than VGA support.  So that you can
> still get a xen console on the domain you could start dom1 with
> xencons=ttyS on its kernel command line and add appropriate
> inittab and securetty entries for ttyS0. This should enable you
> to log in, and then when you start X it should be able to find a VT.
> 
> Please let us know how you get on.
> 
> Ian
> 
> 
> 
> Since domain0 h
> 
> 
> Anyway, it seems to me that this particular problem should not be that
> > hard to solve... if anyone can point me in the right direction, I can even
> > give it a try myself :-)
> >
> > Well any hints/tips on how to get X running in a second domain are welcome!
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Mark.


-- 
Sean Atkinson <sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Netproject



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