Xen project Mailing List

Below is a summary of the projects / features being worked on for the 4.3 time frame. The tentative feature freeze is scheduled for 25 March, which is just over 2 months away. With that in mind, I think it's time to take stock of the development, so we know whether to ask for more help or divert resources.

To that end, I've added a line called "prognosis", indicating the likelihood of completion in the 4.3 timeframe. For items involving code hosted on the Xen.org site (including qemu-xen), that means a likelihood of having the feature code-complete and mostly working by the feature freeze. (It's OK if there are still bugs to be worked out.) For items in Linux, I think it would mean having items on track to make it into the kernel released just after the scheduled 4.3 time frame. Not sure what that means for libvirt. :-)

I've given ratings to projects that I thought I had some insight on, but I would appreciate if everyone could review these and let me know if they're not accurate.

I'd particularly appreciate it if the people listed below could give prognoses on the project listed.

Meanings of prognoses:
- Excellent: It would be very unlikely for this not to be finished in time.
- Good: Everything is on track, and is likely to make it.
- Fair: A pretty good chance of making it, but not as certain
- Poor: Likely not to make it unless intervention is made

- Not for 4.3: self-explanatory

Mukesh Rathor: PVH

Wei: Event channel scalability

Daniel de Graaf: IS_PRIV->XSM

Roger Pau Monne: Persistent blk grants, openvswitch integration, backend scripts

Konrad Wilk: Persistent net grants, multi-page network, multi-page blk

Jim Fehlig: libvirt migration support

Matthew Fioravante: vTPM

Stefano Panella: PV Audio

Igor Kozhukov: IllumOS support

Once we know what items are "at risk", we can list them and decide what to do about it.

This information will be mirrored on the Xen 4.3 Roadmap wiki page:
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Roadmap/4.3

= Timeline =

We are planning on a 9-month release cycle. Based on that, below are
our estimated dates:
* Feature Freeze: 25 March 2013
* First RC: 6 May 2013
* Release: 17 June 2013

The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and
will therefore be fairly unpredictable. The feature freeze may be
slipped for especially important features which are near completion.

= Feature tracking =

Below is a list of features we're tracking for this release. Please
respond to this mail with any updates to the status.

There are a number of items whose owners are marked as "?". If you
are working on this, or know who is working on it, please respond and
let me know. Alternately, if you would *like* to work on it, please
let me know as well.

And if there is something you're working on you'd like tracked, please
respond, and I will add it to the list.

NB: Several of the items on this list are from external projects:
linux, qemu, and libvirt. These are not part of the Xen tree, but are
directly related to our users' experience (e.g., work in Linux or
qemu) or to integration with other important projects (e.g., libvirt
bindings). Since all of these are part of the Xen community work, and
comes from the same pool of labor, it makes sense to track the
progress here, even though they won't explicitly be released as part
of 4.3.

Meanings of prognoses:
- Excellent: It would be very unlikely for this not to be finished in time.
- Good: Everything is on track, and is likely to make it.
- Fair: A pretty good chance of making it, but not as certain
- Poor: Likely not to make it unless intervention is made

== Completed ==

* Serial console improvements
-EHCI debug port

* Default to QEMU upstream (partial)
- pci pass-thru (external)
- enable dirtybit tracking during migration (external)
- xl cd-{insert,eject} (external)

* CPUID-based idle (don't rely on ACPI info f/ dom0)

== Bugs ==

* xl, compat mode, and older kernels
owner: ?
Many older 32-bit PV kernels that can run on a 64-bit hypervisor with
xend do not work when started with xl. The following work-around seems to
work:
    xl create -p lightning.cfg
    xenstore-write /local/domain/$(xl domid lightning)/device/vbd/51713/protocol x86_32-abi
    xl unpause lightning
This node is normally written by the guest kernel, but for older kernels
seems not to be. xend must have a work-around; port this work-around to xl.

== Not yet complete ==

* PVH mode (w/ Linux)
owner: mukesh@oracle
status (Linux): 3rd draft patches posted.
status (Xen): RFC submitted
prognosis: Good

* Event channel scalability
owner: wei@citrix
status: RFC submitted
prognosis: Good
Increase limit on event channels (currently 1024 for 32-bit guests,
4096 for 64-bit guests)

* ARM v7 server port
owner: ijc@citrix
prognosis: Excellent
status: Core hypervisor and Linux patches accepted. Tools patches submitted.

* ARM v8 server port (tech preview)
owner: ijc@citrix
status: ?
prognosis: Tech preview only

* NUMA scheduler affinity
critical
owner: dario@citrix
status: Patches posted
prognosis: Excellent

* NUMA Memory migration
owner: dario@citrix
status: in progress
prognosis: Fair

* blktap3
owner: thanos@citrix
status: RFCs posted
prognosis: Not for 4.3

* Default to QEMU upstream
> Add "intel-hda" to xmexample file, since it works with 64-bit Win7/8
- qemu-based stubdom (Linux or BSD libc)
   owner: anthony@citrix
   status: in progress
   prognosis: ?
   qemu-upstream needs a more fully-featured libc than exists in
   mini-os. Either work on a minimalist linux-based stubdom with
   glibc, or port one of the BSD libcs to minios.

* Persistent grants for blk (external)
owner: roger.pau@citrix
status: Initial implementation posted
prognosis: ?

* Persistent grants for net
owner: annie.li@citrix
status: Initial implementation posted
prognosis: ?

* Multi-page blk rings (external)
- blkback in kernel (konrad@oracle, ?@intel)
- qemu blkback
status: Not started.
prognosis: UNKNOWN

* Multi-page net protocol (external)
owner: ijc@citrix or annie.li@oracle
status: Initial patches posted (by Wei Liu)
expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
increased throughput

* Scalability: 16TiB of RAM
owner: jan@suse
status: Not started

* vTPM updates
owner: Matthew Fioravante @ Johns Hopkins
prognosis: Good
status: some patches submitted, more in progress
- Allow all vTPM components to run in stub domains for increased security
- Update vtpm to 0.7.1 from 0.5.x

* Guest EFI booting
- status: tianocore in-tree, some build problems.
   prognosis: Poor.
   Needs new owner.

* libvirt/libxl integration (external)
- Update libvirt to 4.2
   status: Patch accepted
- Migration
   owner: cyliu@suse (?)
   status: first draft implemented, not yet submitted
   prognosis: ?
- Itemize other things that need work
   To begin with, we need someone to go and make some lists:
   - Features available in libvirt/KVM not available in libvirt/libxl
     See http://libvirt.org/hvsupport.html
   - Features available in xl/Xen but not available in libvirt/Xen

* Allow XSM to override IS_PRIV checks in the hypervisor
owner: Daniel De Graaf
status: patches against 4.3-unstable posted, awaiting approval
prognosis: Good
This makes it possible to allow some user domains limited access to
dom0-only hypercalls. This could be used to allow a user-created
toolstack domain to administer its own set of VMs instead of relying
on dom0's toolstack.

* V4V: Inter-domain communication
owner (Xen): jean.guyader@xxxxxxxxxx
status (Xen): patches submitted
prognosis: ?
owner (Linux driver): stefano.panella@citrix
status (Linux driver): in progress

* Wait queues for mm
owner: ?
status: Draft posted Feb 2012; more work to do.
prognosis: Poor

* xl PVUSB pass-through for both PV and HVM guests
owner: George
status: ?
prognosis: Fair
xm/xend supports PVUSB pass-through to guests with PVUSB drivers (both PV and HVM guests).
- port the xm/xend functionality to xl.
- this PVUSB feature does not require support or emulation from Qemu.
- upstream the Linux frontend/backend drivers. Current work-in-progress versions are in Konrad's git tree.
- James Harper's GPLPV drivers for Windows include PVUSB frontend drivers.

* xl USB pass-through for HVM guests using Qemu USB emulation
owner: George
status: Config file pass-through submitted.
prognosis: Good
xm/xend with qemu-traditional supports USB passthrough to HVM guests using the Qemu emulated USB controller.
The HVM guest does not need any special drivers for this feature.
So basicly the qemu cmdline needs to have:
     -usb -usbdevice host:xxxx:yyyy
- port the xm/xend functionality to xl.
- make sure USB passthrough with xl works with both qemu-traditional and qemu-upstream.

* xl QXL Spice support
owner: Zhou Peng
prognosis: Fair
status: Patches against 4.3-unstable posted, awaiting approval

* Remove hardcoded mobprobe's in xencommons
owner: ?
status: ?
prognosis: Poor.

* openvswitch toostack integration
owner: roger@citrix
prognosis: ?
status: Sample script posted by Bastian ("[RFC] openvswitch support script")

* Rationalized backend scripts (incl. driver domains)
owner: roger@citrix
status: patches submitted
prognosis: Good

* Xen EFI boot
- Signature checking for dom0 kernel / initrd?
status: No owner.
prognosis: Probably not for 4.4

* Serial console improvements
owner: ?
status: Stalled (see below)
prognosis: Probably not for 4.4.
-xHCI debug port (Needs hardware)
-Firewire (needs hardware)

* Make storage migration possible
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably delay until 4.4
There needs to be a way, either via command-line or via some hooks,
that someone can build a "storage migration" feature on top of libxl
or xl.

* Full-VM snapshotting
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably delay until 4.4
Have a way of coordinating the taking and restoring of VM memory and
disk snapshots. This would involve some investigation into the best
way to accomplish this.

* VM Cloning
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably need 4.4
Again, a way of coordinating the memory and disk aspects. Research
into the best way to do this would probably go along with the
snapshotting feature.

* xl vm-{export,import}
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Prob put off until 4.4 (or GSoC project)
Allow xl to import and export VMs to other formats; particularly
ovf, perhaps the XenServer format, or more.

* Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism
owner: george@citrix
status: none
prognosis: Prob put off until 4.4

* PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
owner: stefano.panella@citrix
status: ?
prognosis: ?

* IllumOS support
owner: Igor Kozhukov
status: In progress
prognosis: ?

[Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 development update, and stock-taking