Re: [Xen-users] Xen 3.2 hard to install in debian sid

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:21:14AM +0200, sven waeyenbergh wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> i just gotten a brand new xeon server with VT-d, so i wanted to install the
> latest Xen to use the new features (especially the VT-d stuff).
> I have always run my stable xen systems with debian (etch), so i started
> installing a debian sid.
> However, it seems that the current sid does not even have a xen kernel
> available as package.
> I had to deinstall all xen packages and grab xen from source and recompile
> eveything.
> That is fine for my first tests (works great btw), but i would like to have
> xen as a package for easy upgrades.
> 
> - is there going to be a xen kernel package in sid in the near future ?
> should i have chosen testing ?
> - should i choose another distribution for this ? in that case i'm thinking
> ubuntu server, i would like to avoid RH.
> 

Official Xen supports only 2.6.18 based kernels.. I don't know why you
want to avoid RHEL or CentOS, but at the moment they're one of the best options 
to run as dom0 (they've done a lot of testing, patching and certification on 
different server hardware). RHEL/CentOS 5.x is 2.6.18 based with a lot of
the new drivers backported. 

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has 2.6.24 based dom0/domU kernel, but it's a forward-port of
2.6.18 stuff, and based on people's comments it's not very stable.. basicly
all of the later 2.6.2x dom0 kernels haven't been as stable as 2.6.18 based
ones.

It's a lot of work and a huge mess to forward-port these 2.6.18 xen features
to a new kernel every time new kernel gets released.. that's why noone wants
to do it. And that's why Redhat/Fedora started working to get the xen stuff
integrated into vanilla/mainline kernel.org kernels.. ie. using pv_ops. That
way (in the future) you can use the normal kernel for xen vm's too.. without 
any extra patching or forward-porting.

This is the status page of pv_ops domU kernel-xen for 2.6.25:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvops

Progress/status page about xen dom0 pv_ops work is here: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0

Some of the xen pv_ops features are already in 2.6.24/2.6.25 kernels, and the 
rest
have been sent for upstream inclusion, or will be sent shortly, I think.

This means that in the future we should be able to run the normal/vanilla kernel
also for xen virtual machines (and for dom0).. but unfortunately not yet
today.

Recently released Fedora 9 has this 2.6.25 based domU kernel-xen, for both i386
and x86-64. 

-- Pasi

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