Re: Xen Paravirt

[Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>]

Chuck Short wrote:
> Hi,
>
> So that Xen paravirt ops has made it upstream what is needed in order
> to use it?
>
> Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Hm, I should prepare a documentation patch.

If you build the kernel with CONFIG_PARAVIRT=y, CONFIG_XEN=y and enable
the Xen console, block and net devices (they will default =y), then you
should be able to use the resulting kernel with an existing Xen
installation (it will also boot native).  Unfortunately you can't use
the same actual kernel image file in both cases, but you can use the
same modules.

To boot native: boot the bzImage file as usual.

To boot under Xen, use the vmlinux file as your kernel image (you can
strip and gzip it if you wish).

The console is hvc0, so you may need to pass console=hvc0 in your Xen
config.

Similarly, the blockfront device is /dev/xvd[abc...][123...]; you'll
probably need to pass the appropriate root= kernel command line option. 
It does not support stealing the hdX or sdX names, so that part of the
Xen config will be ignored.

Netfront appears as ethX as usual.

The kernel does not support balloon or suspend/migrate/resume yet, so
that won't work.  You should be able to cleanly shutdown/reboot the
domain via xm.

Tell me how it goes!

    J