Re: HVM domains crash after upgrade from XEN 4.5.1 to 4.5.2

[Atom2 <ariel.atom2@web2web.at>]

Am 16.11.15 um 20:47 schrieb Doug Goldstein:
> I'm a little late to the thread but can you send me (you can do it
> off-list if you'd like) the USE flags you used for xen, xen-tools and
> seabios? Also emerge --info. You can kill two birds with one stone by
> using emerge --info xen.
>> Hi Doug,
>> here you go:
> Thanks. I'll use your configuration as a test point to update a few
> things with regard to the Gentoo ebuilds. I'm not the maintainer of Xen
> and SeaBIOS but I don't think the maintainers will have much issue with
> the changes.
Hi Doug,
that sounds great. If you require any more information, please do not 
hesitate to contact me - either by mail or through this thread.
>> USE flags:
>> app-emulation/xen-4.5.2-r1::gentoo  USE="-custom-cflags -debug -efi
>> -flask -xsm"
>> app-emulation/xen-tools-4.5.2::gentoo  USE="hvm pam pygrub python qemu
>> screen system-seabios -api -custom-cflags -debug -doc -flask (-ocaml)
>> -ovmf -static-libs -system-qemu" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7"
>> sys-firmware/seabios-1.7.5::gentoo  USE="binary"
> So looking at how SeaBIOS and friends are built I think we have an issue
> that needs to be addressed. That being said, you wouldn't have this
> issue if you did USE="-system-seabios -system-qemu". I believe you would
> also be ok if you had done USE="system-seabios system-qemu". But after a
> quick look at everything USE="system-seabios -system-qemu" will
> definitely do the wrong thing.
There was a reason why I did not use -system-seabios. The reason (and a 
discussion about the issues I was facing back then) can be found in this 
thread: 
http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-users/2015-01/msg00103.html. 
This problem was then sorted by changing to the upstream SeaBIOS instead 
of the bundled version (described in 
http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-users/2015-01/msg00131.html) 
by changing the USE flag.

I don't know whether there were any relevant changes since xen-4.3.3, 
but at that point in time it appeared to be my only chance to keep my 
system up and running. Since then (January 2015) I did not find any 
reason to revert the USE flag back to -system-seabios as everything was 
working as expected - obviously up until now.

Thanks Atom2
>> emerge --info: Please see the attached file
>>> I'm not too familiar with the xen ebuilds but I was pretty sure that
>>> xen-tools is what builds hvmloader and it downloads a copy of SeaBIOS
>>> and builds it so that it remains consistent. But obviously your
>>> experience shows otherwise.
>> You are right, it's xen-tools that builds hvmloader. If I remember
>> correctly, the "system-seabios" USE flag (for xen-tools) specifies
>> whether sys-firmware/seabios is used and the latter downloads SeaBIOS in
>> it's binary form provided its "binary" USE flag is set. At least that's
>> my understanding.
>>> I'm looking at some ideas to improve SeaBIOS packaging on Gentoo and
>>> your info would be helpful.
>> Great. Whatever makes gentoo and xen stronger will be awesome. What
>> immediately springs to mind is to create a separate hvmloader package
>> and slot that (that's just an idea and probably not fully thought
>> through, but ss far as I understood Andrew, it would then be possible to
>> specify the specific firmware version [i.e. hvmloader] to use on xl's
>> command line by using firmware_override="full/path/to/firmware").
>>
>> I also found out that an upgrade to sys-firmware/seabios obviously does
>> not trigger an automatic re-emerge of xen-tools and thus hvmloader.
>> Shouldn't this also happen automatically as xen-tools depends on seabios?
>>
>> Thanks and best regards Atom2
>>
>>
>> P.S. If you prefer to take this off-list, just reply to my mail address.