Re: [RFC] Xen Virtual Framebuffer

[Tracy R Reed <treed@copilotconsulting.com>]

Jon Smirl wrote:
> I haven't tried playing with X and Xen, but why doesn't it work to
> just treat the multiple domains like a network? You run X in dom0 and

I currently have one big machine (dual core AMD64, 2G RAM, etc) which I
use for my desktop, my webserver, my mailserver, and I may add other
domains eventually. Dom0 very special in terms of security and system
maintainability. Ideally I would like to be able to put a mimimal
install of a long-term stable distro like CentOS4 or RHEL4 in dom0 and
use that domain only for managing my domU's. In fact I can see someone
someday creating a special little distro just for running in dom0. I
would like to be able to run my desktop/workstation environment in a
domU with X and everything. I currently have to run X in dom0 for
reasons already mentioned in this thread which means I clutter up my
dom0 with a zillion files and do unsafe things in it like read email and
browse the web. When I upgrade my desktop install it dramatically
affects dom0 which potentially destabilizes everything.

Ideally I would install a dom0 when I get a new piece of hardware (or
better yet, manufacturers ship it with dom0 preconfigured standard on
all of their machines and then optionally the OS of your choice in a
domU and you never know dom0 is there unless you care about such
things!) and then never touch it for the life of the hardware.

The beauty of Xen is that your hardware becomes a shared resource to run
whatever combination of OS's you want on allowing you to get better
utilization of all that precious CPU/RAM and you get good security
separation as a bonus. Aside from being able to run X in a domU there is
only one other thing I can think of asking for out of Xen which is the
subject of my next email...

-- 
Tracy R Reed
http://copilotconsulting.com
1-877-MY-COPILOT