Re: [PATCH 0/3] domUloader

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

On a side note, one thing we all have to think about is how a boot 
loader would work with something like a virtual framebuffer.

It may be time to start thinking about writing a first class domU 
bootloader.  Something that just sets up a page table that maps the pfns 
linearly and enough XenBus to read from a virtual disk.  We can reuse 
code from grub for filesystem parsing (or even write it from 
scratch--it's not that hard to just read from a filesystem).

We could also use mini-OS as a base.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Kurt Garloff wrote:

>Hi Jeremy,
>
>On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 01:06:04PM -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  
>
>>The other concern with mounting is that there have been some cases where
>>changes to filesystems have broken reading new filesystems with older
>>kernels.  It's a lot easier to get the library that supports more (and
>>less has to be supported, so you're less likely to need to make changes)
>>than to upgrade your kernel for dom0
>>    
>>
>
>I tend to disagree.
>As the dom0 kernel drives the hardware and hardware drivers seems
>to be the more prominent reason for moving to new kernel versions,
>I would assume the dom0 kernel to be updated more likely than the
>domU kernels.
>And actually, filesystem forward compatibility is not that bad.
>
>I'm not saying this can't be an issue, but I suspect it won't be
>for most people.
>
>Cheers,
>  
>