Re: [Fedora-xen] [fedora-virt] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
Dor Laor wrote: On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote: I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen support as a feature for Fedora 15. The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in a Fedora version typically has one major update. If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for that would be very tight. The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating. I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora virtualisation tools. What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora? Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready than ever. There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware requirements of each. -- Bill Davidsendavid...@tmr.com We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we used in creating them. - Einstein -- xen mailing list xen@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen
Re: [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
M A Young wrote: I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen support as a feature for Fedora 15. The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in a Fedora version typically has one major update. If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for that would be very tight. The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating. I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora virtualisation tools. What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora? Michael Young It would be gret if it could be made to happen, dare I say that the documentation hurdles seem more challenging than the technical issues? I believe the pieces will all be in mainstream by 2.6.38, and hopefully the last bits can be included as patches to 2.6.37 (in addition to what's there). It's a bit rough for medium experienced users at the moment. -- Bill Davidsendavid...@tmr.com We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we used in creating them. - Einstein -- xen mailing list xen@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen
Re: [Fedora-xen] [fedora-virt] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
On 11/08/2010 06:02 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote: - Original Message - From: Bill Davidsendavid...@tmr.com To: dl...@redhat.com Cc: xen@lists.fedoraproject.org, v...@lists.fedoraproject.org, M A Youngm.a.yo...@durham.ac.uk Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15? Dor Laor wrote: On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote: I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen support as a feature for Fedora 15. The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in a Fedora version typically has one major update. If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for that would be very tight. The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating. I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora virtualisation tools. What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora? Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready than ever. There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware requirements of each. re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V extensions certainly used to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today even laptops come with this support. And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have long-since passed. Citations needed. I'm not saying what you claim isn't true but without data this opinion doesn't carry much weight. Regards, Dennis -- xen mailing list xen@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen
