Re: New OpenSolaris release for Xen..

[Joe Bonasera <joe.bonasera@sun.com>]

Nate Carlson wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2006, Joe Bonasera wrote:
>> On Friday we published an updated release of OpenSolaris for Xen. It 
>> is still pre-alpha quality but we wanted to get it out in the 
>> community as soon as it was relatively working.
>>
>> This update adds OpenSolaris-based dom0 capabilities, as well as 
>> 32-bit and 64-bit MP guests. We're currently synced up with 
>> OpenSolaris build 41, and Xen 3.0.2-2.
> 
> Is there documentation anywhere on how to bootstrap a Solaris domU to 
> run on a Linux dom0? Now that it looks like it's getting somewhat stable 
> (at least supports block devices and such!), that would make it much 
> easier for those of us with existing Linux dom0's to try it out.

This is actually how we did our initial development, but it's rather complicated
to set up as Linux and Solaris don't understand each other's file systems.
We wound up with multiple systems talking over NFS as their common language.

The problem is creating the Solaris domU image. For now you need our tools
and a base Solaris on h/w or dom0 to do that. Our plan is to continue to
extend existing Solaris tools for installation, so you'll always need a Solaris installation
to start from, unless someone wants to build some sort of 3rd party Solaris
repackager. That is just not anywhere near the top on our list of To Do things.

We are looking into the possiblity of making a pre-canned domU root file
system based image available for download. For example for a Xen demo-CD.
That has drawbacks as you'll be stuck with a fixed size initial root file
system and other installation choices, but we realize it makes life much
easier for other Xen developers to do some quick testing. It's not hard for
us to do technically, but we have to get some legal stuff cleared with the
lawyers around licensing issues for distribution, redistribution.


Also note to run interesting Solaris domains (MP or 64 bit) you need to use our patched version
of Xen. Note that a Linux dom0 should run just fine on that Xen. We'll be working
on getting the required changes pushed back into mainline Xen in the near future.
Given 3.0.3 is pretty close to done, I expect we'll target 3.0.4.




Joe
> 
> Thanks much for all the hard work!
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
> |       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
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