Hi Fajar,
Creating/modifying packages isn't a problem. That's fine. I'm mostly after opinions on what route I should go. I haven't really been keeping up to date with Xen 4.x hence the questions.
The reason I am looking at Xen 4.1 is because I need to be able to boot grub2 distros which is basically everything recent. So basically Xen 4.x is a must.
Xen 4.1 gitco and RHEL kernel should work fine, but that's getting old (kernel) and I'd like to stay current. Seeing as Xen 4.x uses pvops kernel as default I'd like to stick to this path if it doesn't have any major downsides.
The major hurdle here is whether to go with CentOS 6.x and the xen pvops kernel (with downsides) or find / build my own RHEL 6.x kernel patched with dom0 support. The other issue is the hardware is going to be the current Intel Sandy Bridge platform so there may not be any driver support in the xen pvops kernel??
Worst case being CentOS 5.x with RHEL kernel.
Thoughts? Out of my 3 options, which would you go with and why?
Regards,
Alan
-----Original Message-----
From: Fajar A. Nugraha [mailto:list@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, 21 November 2011 7:29 PM
To: Alan Lam
Cc: xen-users
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] CentOS 5.x / 6.x Dom0
On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Alan Lam <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In this particular case, the use of the pvops kernel means that I don't
> benefit from backported Redhat driver updates / other fixes. Are there RHEL
> kernels with pvops patched in available anywhere? How easy is it to patch in
> pvops to future RHEL kernel updates so that I don't need to wait for whoever
> to update their repo?
Short version: if you decide to use xen on top of RHEL, make SURE you either:
- use the bundled version on RHEL5.x. Really. It's suitable for most
purposes and saves you lots of problems. OR
- experienced in creating and modifying packages using SRPMS
Personally my latest test system is using xen rpm from
http://xenbits.xen.org/people/mayoung/EL6.xen/x86_64/, plus vanilla
kernel 3.1 packaged using F16's kernel SRPM as base. Oh and throw in
zfsonlinux to the mix, since I need the features on this system and
don't mind the I/O slowdown that comes with it. Works fine so far.
Again, if you have no experience in maintaining RPMs yourself, better
stay away from this path. Use RH 5's bundled xen and kernel instead.
A useful link (should still be relevant):
http://new-wiki.xen.org/wiki/RHEL6Xen4Tutorial
--
Fajar
