Feedback on the Ubuntu kernel for server and cloud

[Loïc Minier]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011, Scott Moser wrote:
>    I also would prefer the '-extra' modules for -virtual,

 Ok

> >  * would be nice if we weren't using GRUB 1 anymore; it's a bit
> >    confusing to end up with both in instances
>    We really dont' have a choice here. 'pv-grub' is what runs in EC2 and
> reads /boot/grub/menu.lst, that is really the only option for a sane
> boot loader in xen guests running without HVM.  Someone could dedicate
> resources to getting grub2 running inside paravirt xen, and I'm sure the
> world would be happy for it, but at this point grub-0.97 like behavior is
> all we have.

 I was actually suggesting porting whatever bits need porting to GRUB2;
 I have no idea how much work it is, but it's on my wishlist  :-)

> >  * I didn't test on natty, only on maverick, but it was quite manual to
> >    install a different kernel flavor in an EC2 instance and get it
> >    picked up by pv-grub
>    This is completely a EC2 issue, not relevant in other "virtual"
> scenarios.  It is due to decisions I made in grub-legacy-ec2.
> We wanted the images to work both in
> UEC or other places (where grub2 is used) and in EC2.  So, I added this
> package that did not conflict with grub2 and managed /boot/grub/menu.lst
>   In lucid, the images had 2 kernels (-ec2 and -virtual), and on EC2, the
> -virtual kernel would *never* boot on EC2.    I wanted to support
> upgrading from lucid to maverick, so I added a whitelist in
> /usr/sbin/update-grub-legacy-ec2 (look for 'is_xen_kernel' if you're
> interested).  There are definitely improvements that could be made to what
> is there, but figuring out what exactly is going to work on EC2 is not the
> easiest thing to do.  Thus, the whitelist.
[...]
>    Basically, theres not a lot we can do about needing menu.lst on EC2.

 Taking a step back: I was advised to install the -server kernel, which
 I did, and that wasn't picked up in the GRUB1-alike setup which is used
 in maverick EC2 vms.  I only had to do so because the -virtual kernel
 wasn't suitable, so one way of solving it is to fix the -virtual use
 cases.  But basically my wishlist here is: if I apt-get install another
 EC2-compatible kernel, I want it to appear in the list of kernels that
 pv-grub might load.

-- 
Loïc Minier