Re: [Xen-users] RFH: booting Dom0

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> For testing purposes I am booting under qemu, which I assume should work.
> The problem I'm having at the moment is that when xen gives up VGA and
> supposedly starts linux, I get no messages appearing on the console.  This
> was the case as well when booting natively.
>
> I have a grub boot entry as follows:
>
> title Xen Dom0 2.6.25-rc9 /dev/hda8
> root (hd0,1)
> kernel /boot/xen-3.2.0.gz noreboot lapic
> module /boot/linux-2.6.25-rc9-x0 root=/dev/hda8 ro lapic
> acpi_sleep=s3_bios resume=/dev/hda5
>
> I'm running on another Linux instalation with X and start the show with
> (Don't try this at home kids!):

Is this upstream, kernel.org Linux with Xen support built in?  There's not 
dom0 support in that yet, I'm afraid.  There's work to make a mergeable dom0 
patch for upstream but that's still ongoing.

> I would appreciate any suggestions, surely the xen merge into rc9 should
> at least boot.  Plus I am curious to know what the current wisdom is with
> respect to running xen when compiling from source.  That is, should I stay
> current with the hg testing branch (which one?) or is the 3.2.0 tar file
> good enough?

3.2 is newer, more up to date stuff, may introduce some bugs.  3.1 is the 
reverse.  Since 3.2 is newer, active support for it is likely to be better 
for longer.

Once you've decided which stable tree you're going to use (3.1 or 3.2, really) 
you will want to get updates for bug fixes.  The testing trees let you get 
the latest bug fixes and small feature updates - you can get them "as they 
come" using hg but they themselves won't have yet been tested!  Or you can 
just update to well defined and reviewed point releases...

I guess I'd recommend using hg since that's generally the best maintained and 
most timely source of the code.  Whether you try to grab new patches as they 
come or wait until official point releases rather depends on whether there 
are any particular patches you need, between point releases.

> Do I really need to run 2.6.18 in Dom0 for now, or is it 
> possible to use more recent code?

You need 2.6.18, or a distro kernel that has forward ported Xen dom0 support 
to a newer base kernel.  Soon you'll be able to use the dom0 pv-ops kernel to 
get the latest Linux with Xen dom0 support.  I don't think it's quite ready, 
even for beta testing, yet but I think it was coming along quickly last time 
I heard of it!

Cheers,
Mark

> Perusing the last three months of list 
> traffic is instructive but doesn't seem to contain any direct information
> pertaining to the situation I currently have.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Steve
>
>
>
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