Re: [Xen-users] 32-on-64 and PVGRUB

[Miike Lovell <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/15/2009 2:39 PM, Luke S Crawford wrote:
> so it appears that PVGRUB requires that I specifiy (in my
> domain config file) either the -x86_64  or the -x86_32
> version.
>
> Does anyone have a clever way I can let my users switch
> between x86_64 and i386 without giving them access to
> the domain config file?  Preferably, something more secure
> than PyGRUB?
>
> I was considering hacking up PyGRUB so that it  only
> allows the user a choice of PVGRUB 32 and 64, but that
> would make things more complex, and I'm not sure how much
> more secure that would be (over just using PyGRUB.)
>
> Other than that, I like PVGRUB-  I can have it boot
> to a menu.lst on a read-only partition, so it is impossibe
> for a user to mess up the menu.lst to the point they
> can't get into the rescue image, then I have it default
> to re-calling PVGRUB with the user's menu.lst.
>    
I haven't played much with PVGrub myself. But in doing some research, 
back in the day, I discovered an entry in the Xen Community Blog that 
talked about PVGrub. 
http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/28/xen-33-feature-pv-grub/ . It 
mentions that there is a limitation where PVGrub can't make a 32/64 
switch. So AFAIK, doing that swap inside PVGrub isn't possible. It might 
have been fixed in unstable somewhere but I don't know about it. So you 
would need to do something outside of the PV domains, such as a 
bootloader like PyGrub. But considering the amount of time I have spent 
on this, I don't know if I would take my word for much. Good Luck.
Mike

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