Missing grub-xen recommendation

[Jan Potocki]

Hello

I have a few Ubuntu servers running as virtual machines managed by Xen 
hypervisor in the next-generation PVH mode, which can be described as a 
hardware-assisted paravirtualization (not to be confused with PVHVM, a 
hardware-assisted full virtualization with as many paravirt drivers as 
possible). Booting in Xen PVH mode requires a special version of GRUB 
shipped in the grub-xen package, the same that is used on Xen guests 
running in the legacy PV mode – which is BTW mostly not recommended 
today, yet still beneficial on very first 64-bit x86 CPUs not a shadow 
page table acceleration.

The problem is that all kernel packages have multiple flavors of GRUB 
included in the recommended packages list, but grub-xen package is 
missing there. As a consecuence, upgrading packages with APT results in 
keeping back kernel and GRUB, because grub-pc selected then as a 
candidate for installation conflicts with grub-xen. A subsequent manual 
reinstallation of grub-xen and linux-image-generic is needed to do a 
full upgrade.

Looks like adding grub-xen as recommend in kernel image packages should 
resolve this issue.

Regards
Jan Potocki

Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland

-- 
mgr inż. Jan Potocki
Administrator sieci
Politechnika Wrocławska
Wydział Elektroniki, Fotoniki i Mikrosystemów
Katedra Cybernetyki i Robotyki
bud. C-16 / P1.4, tel. 71 340 7619
jan.potocki at pwr.edu.pl