Re: Current state of Xen microcode (Was: Re: uploading 3.16~rc5-1~exp1)

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 09:53:32AM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:
> Adding xen-devel and some of the Linux maints,
> 
> On Mon, 2014-07-14 at 23:22 +0200, maximilian attems wrote:
> > I will upload tomorrow Tuesday around 22h00 UT to experimental.
> > 
> > There are two TODOS concerning the not yet forwarded Debian patches:
> > - cgroups
> > - xen microcode
> > 
> > 
> > I consider both not a blocker, but would be happy if Xen guys could
> > have a look for what is needed.
> 
> The xen microcode patches which maks is referring to are these:
> http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/kernel/dists/trunk/linux/debian/patches/features/all/xen/
> which are a forward port of Jeremy's old microcode_xen.ko driver.

They are also at my branch
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/konrad/xen.git/log/?h=stable/misc

Hm, I should rebase them at some point.
> 
> I've not been keeping up on Xen x86 microcode stuff these days but I
> think we don't need this any more with modern Xen since we can parse the
> microcode blob off the front of the initrd, is that right?

Right. And best of it, the support for that is in dracut so
it automatically can happen (thought you still need to add
'ucode=scan' in the /etc/default/grub.cfg in the GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN
parameter) and also in /etc/dracut.conf add 'early_microcode=yes'.

> 
> (this is predicated on Xen 4.4 hitting unstable, which is underway)

unstable == Debian unstable?

> 
> Thanks,
> Ian.
>