Xen support

[Mircea MITU]

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 17:59 -0400, ed despard wrote:
> Hi,
> 	I am the student who is working on xen support this summer.  I dont  
> think i can accept any code contributions from anyone, but i deffinitly  
> need to know what people want to see in the way of support, and testing  
> along the way.  Im currently working on a set of xen packages, and as  
> soon as i have something ready to be tested, ill let the list know.


Fine by me (especially with code contribution, since I wrote my last
code line three years ago ;). See below for some comments.


> Xen has issues with agp, im not sure what the status is in the newest  
> release of getting 3d acceleration to work, but you should inquire on  
> the xen-devel list at lists.xensource.com
> 

ACK.


> >
> >> What exactly do you expect from xen packages and why?
> >
> > 1. linux-image-dom0, linux-image-domU Ubuntu packages using the same
> > config as the official linux-image packages (when possible)
> 
> My packages have 2.4 and 2.6 dom0 and domU images
> they dont currently have the same config as the stock ubuntu installer,  
> but ill work on doing that.

Can you put a wiki page in place describing your status and a link to
current packages (when the packages will be ready)? I'll be happy to
give them a try.

> I also have packages planned for patches to the stock kernel source,  
> and would like to hack somthing like make-kpkg so that it is easier for  
> users to compile their own xen kernels.

That will be really cool^H^H^H^Huseful especially for package
maintainers and those who need to run non-stock kernels.

>   My kernel packages also  
> contain scripts along the same lines of update-grub, to keep grub  
> entries up to date with the current hypervisor/dom0 kernels installed.   
> I still need to come up with a config file format for passing this  
> information around (similar to /etc/kernel.conf) so that i can stop  
> using debconf as a registry...
> 


I think a patch to grub package - /sbin/update-grub, will be a better
approach, since:

/boot# cp vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386-xen0
/boot# cp vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386-xenU
/boot# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub .
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.list file...
found: /boot/grub/menu.lst .
Searching for splash image... none found, skipping...
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-686
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386-xen0
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386-xenU
Found kernel: /memtest86+.bin
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done

The patch may look to xen hipervisor to add it as a new kernel for every
"xen.$" entry.

> > 2. xen tools Ubuntu packages
> > (to not "abuse" third-party binaries anymore ;)
> 
> I currently have a single tools package, that includes all the tools  
> and libraries, I am inexperienced in the needs of packageing libraries  
> properly, all i know is that lintian complains about just having them  
> in the tools package. Pointers in the right direction here would be  
> appreciated.
> 

I cannot help with deb packaging since my only debs were made with
checkinstall. But on this list there are a lot of debian/ubuntu package
maintainers so... :)


> > On my wishlist:
> > - xen configuration wizard (debconf and/or gui)
> 
> look at cosi.clarkson.edu/xen  not only did we write a workshop, but  
> also a gui configuration tool and a hacked togeather debian installer  
> to install xen.

I didn't knew about gXenophilia. Thanks for this pointer.
It looks very interesting.

> I would like input on how and what questions should be asked  
> during installation.  I was planning on asking for dom0 memory  
> allocation and dom0 kernel(choosen from a list of 2.4/2.6 dom0  
> kernels).

In an ideal world, the installer should be able to autodetect if it's
running in a xen domain or not.

If not, the Xen0 and XenU kernels should be installed only if an
"Add/Install Xen Virtualization Support" option is checked by the user.
And yes, the dom0 memory option should be present but also with a
default value (half of detected memory should be ok).

All available xen kernels should be installed, with the most stable one
(accordingly to some tests) as default option.

Otherwise, if it's running in a xenU domain, the installer should
install only the xenU kernels (all of them).

>   The  root device for dom0 would be the same root device the  
> target system was installed on.

Of course.

>   But should there be a system of  
> creating other ubuntu guest domains from within the installer? I would  
> prefer to see that task left to a seperate tool that could be run on  
> first boot, or any other time the user wants.  I would prefer to get  
> some input from the installer team here on how they would like all of  
> this integreated with other stages, especialy the grub-installer stage  
> in regards to my update-grub-xen script.
> 	Also in the vein of installer questions, is there documentation on how  
> udebs/debhelper integrate? and what extra information do i need to  
> include in the package control file?





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