Xen vs. GRUB

[Thomas Schwinge <tschwinge@gnu.org>]

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[Cced to <grub-devel@gnu.org>.]

Hello!

This is about porting GRUB to Xen to allow booting a GNU/Hurd system as a
Xen domU.

GNU/Hurd systems use GNU Mach as a microkernel and have a GRUB
configuration like the following one, which is currently not translatable
to a Xen configuration:

#v+
title Debian GNU/Hurd
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/gnumach.gz \
  root=device:hd0s6
module (hd0,5)/hurd/ext2fs.static \
  --multiboot-command-line=${kernel-command-line} \
  --host-priv-port=${host-port} \
  --device-master-port=${device-port} \
  --exec-server-task=${exec-task} \
  -T typed ${root} $(task-create) $(task-resume)
module (hd0,5)/lib/ld.so.1 \
  /hurd/exec \
  $(exec-task=task-create)
#v-


On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 10:21:14PM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Thomas Schwinge, le Tue 02 Jan 2007 12:10:49 +0100, a ?crit :
> > On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 01:11:05AM +0000, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > > A crude first ugly patch.
> > 
> > I wondered how you got the thing to boot, wondered if you had also ported
> > GRUB to Xen along the way, but then I saw the patch for
> > `kern/bootstrap.c'.  :-)

[Samuel there hard-coded the above quoted ``module [...]'' lines.]

> ;)
> 
> Yes, the problem is that Xen is a bit Linux-oriented, and as such the
> parameter is called "ramdisk", can ship only one file, and doesn't have
> a command line separate from the kernel's...

Is there a consensus that GRUB (or rather GRUB2) should be ported to
allow them to run in a Xen environment?


Regards,
 Thomas

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