On Jan 31, 2012, at 8:58 AM, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
> DJ Lucas wrote:
>> On 01/30/2012 10:47 AM, Tobias Gasser wrote:
>>> Qrux schrieb:
>>>
>>>> You could include Xen. ;) And VirtualBox (though someone else would have
>>>> to write that bit).
>>> i have a machine running lfs 6.x with virtualbox.
>>>
>>> tobias
>>>
>> Virtualbox requires a multi-lib system to build the guest additions.
>> Would it be acceptable to hack it up to not build the guest additions
>> for alternate arch, and distribute extracted 32 and 64 bit guest
>> additions from the released binaries? Does Xen has any similar requirements?
>
> What are the advantages/disadvantages of VB over Xen and KVM? If it
> doesn't add any significant capabilities, I don't see the effort to make
> it fit into BLFS as useful.
I think there are a couple of core considerations to distinguish virt systems:
* Whether it uses full-virtualization or paravirtualization.
* The dependencies (including the need for multilib systems)...
* ..and the context for those dependencies.
For Xen:
* It has both full-virt and paravirt capabilities.
* It *can* require gnarly 32-bit multilib dependencies for 64-bit
systems...
* ...when you want full-virt or hardware-passthrough on 64-bit systems.
That last bit is what I meant by "contextual dependencies". For example, I
only run Xen with 64-bit Linux Guests on a 64-bit Linux Host without
hardware-passthru. So, I'm not affected by the 32-bit multilib dependencies at
all. So, in my case, I've been able to build a 64-bit-only Xen system on
LFS-7.0 with bridge-utils as the only dependency.
For Xen, the gnarly 32-bit/multilib dependencies mostly seem to come from
either full-virt or hardware-passthru related features.
I can't say I know what the package selection criteria is for BLFS (and no, I'm
not starting that debate again right now). But to answer Andrew's
question--yes, I think we should consider including any virt system in BLFS if
it's "relatively easy" to whittle down the "contextual dependencies" as far as
is practical (e.g., not needing to build a multilib system just to get your
virt system running).
More simply, if you can get guests running on a host, that should be enough to
say: "This virt system, in this specific configuration with its limits, is easy
to run on a non-multilib LFS system. That's a pretty low bar, but makes it
analogous to postfix/exim...Each has their pros and cons, and each could be
built differently--and with a boatload of deps--but as long as we can get each
to perform their "main function", it's available as a choice.
Q
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