Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 release planning proposal

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 01:56:27PM +0100, George Dunlap wrote:
> On 20/08/12 20:14, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> >Another USB item:
> >
> >* xl support for USB device passthru using QEMU emulated USB for HVM guests 
> >(no need for PVUSB drivers in the HVM guest).
> >   This works today in xm/xend with qemu-traditional, but is limited to USB 
> > 1.1, probably because
> >   the old version of Qemu-dm-traditional which lacks USB 2.0/3.0.
> >   So xl support for emulated USB device passthru for both qemu-upstream and 
> > qemu-traditional.
> 
> OK, I'll put that on the list.  Thanks.
> 

Thanks!

> >More wishlist items:
> 
> I'm going to be experimenting with a website designed for user
> feedback, to both suggest features but also to help prioritize what
> you think are the important features. Expect an e-mail in a day or
> two with the announcement.
> 

Good idea.

> I think the Citrix team is probably mostly full for this release
> cycle; so anything that requires significant development work but
> doesn't already have developers working on it will probably have to
> be put off until later, unless you can convince the regular devs
> it's something to prioritize, or you can bring in more developers to
> work on it. :-)
> 

Yeah I can see that :) If we aren't able to get these done for 4.3,
some of these might be good GSoC projects aswell.. 


> >* Nested hardware virtualization. Important for easier testing and 
> >development of Xen (Xen-on-Xen),
> >   and for running other hypervisors in Xen VMs. Interesting for labs, POCs, 
> > etc.
> 
> The ball is really in Intel / AMD's court on this one.  It's on our
> list of "things that might be nice", but given the other things we
> really do want to try to make into 4.3, wasn't that big of a
> priority for us.  If Intel or AMD want to make this a priority for
> them for 4.3, I can track it.
> 

I think AMD nested svm is in pretty good shape already,
but Intel nested VMX is not there yet.. 

I think we'll know more about this after XenSummit.

> >* VGA/GPU passthru support for AMD/NVIDIA; lots of patches on xen-devel 
> >archives,
> >   but noone has yet stepped up to clean up and get them merged.
> >   Currently Intel gfx passthru patches are merged to Xen, but primary 
> > ATI/NVIDIA require extra patches.
> >   This is actually something that a LOT of users ask often, it's discussed 
> > almost every day on ##xen on IRC.
> >   I wonder if XenClient folks could help here?
> 
> What kind of patches are these? Are they mostly to pvops Linux?
> 

I think mostly Qemu-dm patches.. some "tricks" are required to 
fetch the VBIOS from the physical gfx card so it can be copied to the HVM guest 
(some vendor specific hacks are needed to get a properly working copy of the 
VBIOS).
Also legacy IO ports, legacy vga memory ranges, MMIOs, VESA/VBE need to be 
passed thru etc.

Intel-specific tweaks are already in xen-unstable, but AMD/NVIDIA specific ones 
aren't.


> >* Dom0 Keyboard/mouse sharing to HVM guests; mainly needed by VGA/GPU 
> >passthru users.
> >   Fujitsu guys posted some patches for this in 2010, and XenClient guys in 
> > 2009 (iirc),
> >   but nothing got further developed and merged to upstream Xen.
> 
> What exactly is involved here? If the work is mostly done, but just
> needs someone to dust it off and submit it, then it's probably
> something we can add to the list.
> 

Here's the patch from Dietmar Hahn / Fujitsu:
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-03/msg01292.html

And here's some discussion about the XenClient keyboard/mouse sharing patch 
from Jean Guyader:

http://old-list-archives.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-03/msg00979.html
and
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-01/msg00585.html


> >* QXL virtual GPU support for SPICE. Someone was already developing this,
> >   and posted patches earlier during 4.2 development cycle to xen-devel.
> >   Upstream Qemu includes QXL support.
> 
> If "someone" wants to step up and claim responsibility, I'll put it
> on the list of things to track. :-)
> 

Hehe, hopefully the "someone" notices this thread.. if not, we can go through 
xen-devel archives.


> >* PVSCSI support in XL. James Harper was (semi) interested in working with 
> >this,
> >   because he has a PVSCSI frontend driver in Windows GPLPV drivers, and 
> > he's using PVSCSI for tape backups himself.
> >


Hopefully James is still interested in this :) 


> >* libvirt libxl driver improvements; support more Xen features.
> >   Allows better using the Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/RHEL/CentOS "default" 
> > virtualization GUI also with Xen.
> 
> This is pretty important.  Looking at feature parity between
> libvirt+KVM and libvirt+Xen on the Citrix xen.org to-do list, but to
> begin with it's more of a research than a feature, so wasn't on this
> particular list.  If you happen to know a specific list of missing
> features, that might be something we could try to fit in for 4.3.
> 

Yeah, I've been planning to test the latest libvirt libxl driver and 
see what works and what doesn't, but haven't gotten there yet.

-- Pasi


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