Xen in Hardy

Fri Apr 4 00:39:38 UTC 2008

Aurélien,

I forgot to comment your questions on my last e-mail. I'm worried about that
too. My main concern is that I can run Xen almost on any machine I have, but
KVM will only run on that that the processor has virtualization extensions
(isn't it?).

If KVM prove to be better supported that Xen I think I can consider using
it, but right now it only limits my options.

Cheers, Leandro.

2008/4/3, Aurélien Naldi <aurelien.naldi at gmail.com>:
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:43 PM, Leandro Pereira de Lima e Silva
>
> <leandro at limaesilva.com.br> wrote:
>
> > Sander,
> >
> > That's what I did:
> > - I was trying to create a virtual machine with hardy on it (hardy on
> the
> > host too) using xen-create-image.
> > - xen-tools isn't coming with hooks for installing hardy (I've already
> > filled a bug report about that), so I tried symlinking hardy.d to edgy.d
> > just like the symlinks from feisty.d and gutsy.d.
> >  - Runned: xen-create-image --force --fs ext3 --image-dev
> > /dev/group/volume_root --memory 512 --passwd --swap-dev
> > /dev/group/volume_swap --dist hardy --mirror
> > http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu --gateway gateway_ip_addr --ip
> ip_addr
> > --netmask netmask_addr --hostname hostname_addr, where
> "group/volume_root",
> > "group/volume_swap", "gateway_ip_addr", "ip_addr", "netmask_addr",
> > "hostname_addr" are actually other things that I've changed to get some
> > privacy.
> >  - Tried to boot, but initramfs can't find the root.
> > - Fixed a few things on the configuration file generated by
> xen-create-image
> > (tried different combinations, this is how it ended):
> >   - Add "root        = '/dev/sda2 ro'" after the memory line.
> >    - Fixed the disk section that just contained "',sda1,w'," inside of
> it,
> > at the end it became:
> >       disk        = [ 'phy:group/volume_swap,sda1,w',
> > 'phy:group/volume_root,sda2,w' ]
> >  - Add "xenblk" to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and recreated the initrd
> > file. (the same as the above item, what seemd to work after a few
> > tentatives)
> > - Runned xm create -c hostname_addr
> > - Machine starts to boot and hangs at:
> >   * Running local boot scripts
> (/etc/rc.local)                            [
> > OK ]
> >
> > - Switched to gutsy (in xen-create-image), thinking that maybe it hangs
> > because of some new hook needed for hardy.
> > - Got the same problem that I had with hardy.
>
>
> Your guest probably doesn't hang, it just doesn't show the login
> prompt. You will get one by adding the following to your
> /etx/xen/guest-name.cfg:
>
> extra = "console=tty"
>
>
> Incidently, I have been playing just yesterday with xen in hardy and
> encountered the same problems.
> The next one for me is that the guest can't connect to the net, even
> if an eth0 shows up. The problem seems to be related to the new kernel
> in hardy as the very same host using gutsy kernel works just fine.
>
> More info on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xen-3.2/+bug/204010
>
> I would like to take the occasion to ask about the future of xen in
> ubuntu. A while ago a switch to kvm was announced. I would like to
> know if xen will still be supported or if it will be deprecated at
> some point.
> The nice thing with kvm is its simplicity when running unmodified
> guests, but it is much slower than xen when running "xen-enabled"
> guests. Xen has a number of other advantages:
> - the xen-create-image scripts make building new guests with xen much
> easier and faster than with kvm!
> - xen can use real devices easilly, I'm not even sure that kvm can (it
> requires full disk image, doesn't it ?)
>
> as a result, xen is so much easier to use and efficient for my use
> case (always running a few systems, without graphical interface).
>
>   I see few options for xen in hardy
> * fully supported, which requires to fix the bugs discussed in this
> thread (missing hardy hooks, missing xenblk in initramfs/kernel and
> broken xennet in the latest kernel)
> * supported, which requires a bit less work (i.e. reverting to gutsy
> kernel to fix the xennet bug)
> * deprecated, which would be a bad regression if kvm doesn't get a LOT
> of attention (which is probably not doable in time)
>
> is the plan one of these options or an alternate one ? And then what
> is the plan in the long run ? The fedora guys seem to be working
> toward integrating as much of the huge and dirty xen patch in the
> vanilla kernel. If they succed the state of xen in every distrtib
> would be greatly improved IMHO. Is canonical able/willing to help this
> effort ?
>
> Sorry for the long worries/ranting, I hope it doesn't feel harsh for
> the people working on xen in ubuntu as it really doesn't intend to:
> thanks for your work so far, I just would like to get more hints about
> the future and didn't find any recent  "official" discussion about
> this.
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> Aurélien Naldi
>
> --
>
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-- 
Leandro Pereira de Lima e Silva
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