On Thu 11/29/07 at 11:34 AM, Tim.Marsland at Sun.COM wrote: > >To ensure that this new PV-aware cmdk is only loaded in HVM > >domains, we > >propose to install it in a new directory: /platform/i86hvm/kernel/ > >drv. In > >HVM domains, this new directory will be prepended to the default > >module > >search path. Just to be clear: we are not proposing to create a > >whole new > >'implementation' called i86hvm. This is just for the PV drivers. > > How will that prepending happen, exactly?
I'm still working on the 'exactly'. It will probably involve a change in either startup_modules() or kobj_init(), but I just started looking into this. The 'generally' is that Xen provides a cpuid instruction that allows us to determine whether this is an HVM domain and, if so, which version of Xen we are running on. On non-Xen platforms, this cpuid instruction returns an error. If we determine we are running in an hvm domain on a supported version of Xen, we will add /platform/i86hvm/kernel to the beginning of the default search path. Otherwise, we will leave the search path untouched, and Solaris will access all devices through the (possibly emulated) physical interfaces. Nils
