Re: Xen 4.4 development update

["Pasi Kärkkäinen" <pasik@iki.fi>]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:48:13AM +0200, Olaf Hering wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 20, George Dunlap wrote:
> 
> > On 20/09/13 16:57, Olaf Hering wrote:
> > >On Mon, Sep 16, George Dunlap wrote:
> > >
> > >>* xend still in tree
> > >>  - xl list -l on a dom0-only system
> > >>  - xl list -l doesn't contain tty console port
> > >>  - Alternate transport support for migration
> > >libxl has no pvscsi support. This is listed as "SCSI LUN/Host
> > >passthrough (PVSCSI)" in the page below.
> > 
> > 
> > >
> > >Is PVUSB already handled by libxl?
> > >
> > >http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/XL_vs_Xend_Feature_Comparison
> > 
> > Are you personally using PVSCSI, and/or pvusb, and/or do you know any large
> > downstreams and/or user bases that depend on them?
> 
> I'm not using it myself. At least two different customers were using it.
> As Jan said in his reply, we should not silently drop functionality.
> 

Earlier James Harper mentioned on xen-devel that he'd take a look at implementing PVSCSI in xl/libxl,
because he's using Xen PVSCSI for tape backups, but I don't think he got to it so far...

> > That said, pvusb should be really simple to do once we have the HVM hot-plug
> > support; I've got a patch series that just needs to be cleaned up and
> > submitted.  It's on my short list of things to do, but realistically looking
> > like it's not going to happen for 4.4 (unless we reconsider the release
> > cycle length).  If you're interested in taking it over, I'd be happy to hand
> > it off to you.
> 
> Up to now I have not looked at pvusb. I will do so in the next days.
> 

A lot of Xen users are asking for PVUSB, it's being discussed often on ##xen and on mailinglists,
but it isn't very easy to use these days because of the out-of-tree usbback/usbfront drivers, 
and toolstack support only in xm/xend.


-- Pasi