MacOS X on Xen

MacOS X on Xen

[Jun OKAJIMA]

Somebody know feasiblity of MacOS X on Xen?
Of course, it is possible if you have VT, but I think DomU kernel
( a Xen kernel you dont have to use VT with) is also possible.
It comes with a source code of the core part ( Mach micro kernel),
so I believe that it is not impossible to run MacOS X as DomU of Xen,
without VT.

                    --- Okajima, Jun. Tokyo, Japan.

Re: MacOS X on Xen

[Mark Williamson]

> Somebody know feasiblity of MacOS X on Xen?

Ehhhhh, perhaps feasible in a number of ways but it's not terribly obvious to 
me which will actually work...

> Of course, it is possible if you have VT, but I think DomU kernel
> ( a Xen kernel you dont have to use VT with) is also possible.
> It comes with a source code of the core part ( Mach micro kernel),
> so I believe that it is not impossible to run MacOS X as DomU of Xen,
> without VT.

Difficult.  Firstly, it's hard because Apple have done something to prevent 
OSX from booting on anything but real Apple hardware.  I'm not clear exactly 
how this scheme works, so it's not clear to me if you can circumvent it in a 
legal-looking way in a VT virtual machine....  You could probably apply the 
hacks used to get VMware hosting MacOS already, but that's not really the 
Right Way legally or technically.

Secondly, if you wanted to actually *port* Darwin you'd have another obstacle.  
standard x86 Darwin is not compatible with MacOS/x86 Darwin :-(  Apple have 
broken driver compatibility here (userspace should still work) for some 
reason.  Therefore I understand it's not possible to recompile your kernel 
for MacOS as was possible on the PPC platform (in fact at one point there was 
a plan to make OSX run on PPC Xen, but I don't know if that's been scuppered 
by the switch to Intel)

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!