Re: xl vs. xm, possible bug in xl

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>]

On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 06:42:12PM +0200, Sven Köhler wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> xl is supposed to superseed xm, is this correct? How mature is xl,
> actually? I'm asking, because the maintainers of the gentoo's xen
> packages are migrating the init.d-scripts from xm to xl, but xl is
> causing a lot of trouble.
> 
> Well, xl basically fails to start domains on my system.
> > # xl create /etc/xen/xen-sk1
> > Parsing config file /etc/xen/xen-sk1
> > libxl: error: libxl.c:2145:libxl_set_memory_target new target 0 for dom0 is below the minimum threshold
> > libxl: error: libxl.c:2145:libxl_set_memory_target new target 0 for dom0 is below the minimum threshold
> > libxl: error: libxl.c:2145:libxl_set_memory_target new target 0 for dom0 is below the minimum threshold
> > failed to free memory for the domain
> 
> Consider, that autobaloon=1 in xl.conf.
> With the autobaloon=0 the errors change to
> 
> > # xl create /etc/xen/xen-sk1
> > Parsing config file /etc/xen/xen-sk1
> > libxl: error: libxl_device.c:476:libxl__wait_for_device_model Device Model not ready
> > xl: fatal error: libxl_create.c:535, rc=-1: libxl__confirm_device_model_startup
> 
> 
> Note, that I use dom0_mem=512M in grub.conf. Also, xm top states, that
> there are 2139432k free memory. Considering the first issue, it seems
> like xl is trying to baloon memory away from dom0, which fails - which
> seems obvious wrong considering that I use dom0_mem. CONFIG_XEN_BALLOON
> is enabled for dom0

Yeah, there is a bug there (in Linux kernel) that just got integrated in 3.1-rc5.
Will show up in 3.0.5.

Hm, but the migrating memory away from dom0 seems bizzare. Lets ping
David who has been in the thick of this. I have a feeling it is the
"delta" patches ..

> 
> The second issue sounds more severe, and I'm pretty clueless.
> 
> Is this a bug in xl?

> Starting the very same domain with xm works without a hassle.
> 
> 
> dom0:
> vanilla 3.0.0 with vga patch

You could upgrade to 3.0.4 and then you get the VGA patch for free
(and some bug-fixes too).

> xen 4.1.1
> 
> domU config:
> kernel = "/usr/src/linux-domU/_domU/vmlinux"
> memory = 2048
> vcpus = 8
> 
> root = "/dev/xvda1"
> extra = "ro"
> 
> disk = [
> 	"phy:/dev/md2,xvda1,w",
> 	"phy:/dev/md5,xvda2,w",
> ]
> vif = [
> 	"bridge=xenbr0,mac=00:16:3E:00:00:01",
> 	"bridge=xenbr1,mac=00:16:3E:00:01:01",
> ]
> 
> 
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