[Bug 857662] Re: Should xenbus_probe_frontend be built-in?

[Tim Gardner]

I would prefer to _not_ enable XEN_BLKDEV_FRONTEND for kernel flavours
that are not intended for virtual environments. In order to do so you
must first build in one of the front end device drivers such as
CONFIG_XEN_BLKDEV_FRONTEND=y or CONFIG_XEN_NETDEV_FRONTEND=y.
CONFIG_XEN_XENBUS_FRONTEND=y is not a separately selectable config
option.

Xen netboot images should be based on the -virtual flavour.

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Title:
  Should xenbus_probe_frontend be built-in?

Status in “hw-detect” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “hw-detect” source package in Natty:
  Triaged
Status in “linux” source package in Natty:
  Confirmed
Status in “hw-detect” source package in Oneiric:
  Triaged
Status in “linux” source package in Oneiric:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  xenbus_probe_frontend is currently modular in several flavours,
  notably in the i386/generic-pae and amd64/generic flavours which we
  use to build d-i Xen netboot images.  The purpose of
  xenbus_probe_frontend appears to be to connect to the Xen bus and then
  emit uevents for any devices it finds there.  Once it's loaded,
  autoloading for such things as xen-netfront works fine, allowing the
  guest to find its network interface.  I believe that xen-blkfront
  works in a similar way.

  However, with xenbus_probe_frontend modular, the early stages of the
  installer plus the early stages of normal system boot need to load
  xenbus_probe_frontend in order to find block and network devices.  If
  we're going to do this, it seems as though we might as well just build
  xenbus_probe_frontend into the kernel.  It seems to me that it should
  be pretty harmless on non-Xen systems, although of course somebody
  knowledgeable should verify that.

  Right now, it's built in for the -virtual flavours, but we aren't
  currently building installer images from that, and I think I'm happier
  building them directly from -generic-pae / -generic anyway.

  This is true in both Natty and Oneiric.  If you can't do this for
  Oneiric and/or are unwilling to do this in a stable update for Natty,
  then please let me know so that I can add a workaround to the
  installer in time.  Thanks!

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