Re: Hosting type-1 HV server and client on the same computer

[Paul Leiber <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Am 14.01.2023 um 13:07 schrieb עמרי אלפרון:
> Hello,
>
> I address this mailing-list after tones of searching Google, YT, forums, 
> etc...
> I want to have a bare-metal HV on my computer and be able to access it 
> *from the same* computer.
It is not quite clear to me what you mean. Do you want to control the 
hypervisor from the same computer it is running on? Or do you want to 
use the computer the hypervisor is running on as a daily driver? Both is 
possible with Xen.
For the first case, you need a OS which enables you to control the HV, 
this is the Dom0 in Xen terms, in most cases linux based.
For the second case, I would not recommend to use the Dom0 as a daily 
driver OS, because it is safety relevant. One major reason for 
virtualization is to use a VM which is encapsulated for riskier 
operations, that would be a DomU in Xen terms. (For accessing certain 
devices (e.g. GPU) directly via a DomU, you need to use PCI  passthrough 
for that device.)
> The dream is to have something like QubesOS but that's not QubesOS 
> (since their website says my laptop isn't compatible) and I'm too new to 
> these stuff, I afraid I won't know how to do the tweakings myself.
Why isn't it compatible? QubesOS is Xen based. If there are hardware 
incompatibilities in QubesOS, they are most likely also in Xen. On the 
contrary, I assume that QubesOS has probably a better hardware support 
than Xen.
> This is so I be able to test OS, software and alike as well as "build" 
> and "destroy" machines without actually destroying them.
> I saw I can install Xen on Linux but I got some troubles during the process.
Which linux? Which troubles? For me, it worked out of the box with a 
Debian linux and standard packages.
> Then I looked up XCPng, ESXi and alike but they're all servers, which I 
> can't access from the same computer (can I?).
I don't know, but I assume that they all can be accessed from the same 
computer.
> (I can make my other old laptop a server and the second a client by 
> using PTP wire connection if that's possible, but it's less preferred)
Why? You can control Xen via a terminal console directly in the Dom0. 
Dom0 can even run a GUI like KDE or Gnome if you want to (although I 
tend to keep my Dom0 minimalistic). No need to use a second computer. 
(Of course, if you want to, you can always remotely login to the Dom0 
via SSH, but it is not required).
There is something like a Dom0-less Xen, but I never tried it myself.

> I also looked at type-2 HV like VirtualBox but I'm afraid it's going to 
> be too much for my laptop to handle (OS -> HV -> OS instead of HV -> OS)
I don't know enough to say something solid about that. I would assume 
that there is not so big a difference between type 1 and type 2 
hypervisors, regarding hardware requirements, but I might be wrong.
> Any tips, links, guides, manuals and help of any kind would be great!
This got me started:

https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Beginners_Guide