Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[M A Young]

I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen 
support as a feature for Fedora 15.

The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 
2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship 
with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 
release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key 
xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a 
Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in 
a Fedora version typically has one major update.

If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be 
possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for 
that would be very tight.

The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make 
xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from 
when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but 
they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.

I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry 
for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. 
We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora 
virtualisation tools.

What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a 
feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should 
we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?

 	Michael Young

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[W. Michael Petullo]

>  I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen 
>  support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>
>  The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 
>  2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship 
>  with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 
>  release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key 
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a 
>  Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in 
>  a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>  
>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be 
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for 
>  that would be very tight.
>  
>  The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make 
>  xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page 
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from 
>  when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but 
>  they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>  
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry 
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. 
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora 
>  virtualisation tools.
>  
>  What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a 
>  feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should 
>  we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora? 
My personal opinion is that we should make an aggressive attempt to get
Domain 0 in Fedora 15. As Michael Young points out, there is presently
some uncertainty as to when the Xen drivers will be upstream. They may
make the 2.6.37 series and therefore Fedora 15 or they may
not. Regardless, we will have to touch a lot of subsystems (e.g. grubby,
Red Hat Bugzilla #640486), so it makes sense to start early.

If the Xen drivers don't make Fedora 15, then little is lost. We can
continue to test the Domain 0 kernel (without Domain U) and work on the
supporting infrastructure. It would be useful for our effort to have a
working Domain 0, grubby, etc in Fedora 15 even if other features do
not make it. In the worst case, we may delay the announcement of the
Domain 0 feature to Fedora 16, but can include all progress completed
in Fedora 15. There is no shame in a delayed feature -- this happened
to systemd during the preparation for Fedora 14.

-- 
Mike

:wq

[Gerd Hoffmann]

   Hi,

>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for
>  that would be very tight. 
Talk to the kernel people.  I think the chances to get the backend 
drivers into the rawhide kernel even before the 2.6.38 merge window are 
not that bad.  Are they in linux-next already?

The situation is quite different from the 2.6.2x times when dom0 support 
was dropped from the fedora kernels.  The patches are pretty 
self-contained now, i.e. they touch xen bits only instead of sprinkling 
all over arch/x86/.  Also the Xen people have reasonable and realistic 
plan to get the stuff upstream soon.

cheers,
   Gerd

[M A Young]

On Mon, 8 Nov 2010, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:

>  Talk to the kernel people.  I think the chances to get the backend
> drivers 
>  into the rawhide kernel even before the 2.6.38 merge window are not that bad. 
>  Are they in linux-next already? 
Not yet. The patches I have seen so far are mostly bug fixes and updates 
for things already in 2.6.37 though I think work is about to start on 
porting the drivers to 2.6.37.

 	Michael Young

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 08:55:13PM +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen 
>  support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>  
>  The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 
>  2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship 
>  with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 
>  release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key 
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a 
>  Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in 
>  a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>  
>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be 
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for 
>  that would be very tight.
>  
>  The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make 
>  xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page 
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from 
>  when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but 
>  they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>  
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry 
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. 
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora 
>  virtualisation tools. 
Regardless of whether the kernel gets into F15, the work to improve userspace
integration, in particular grub, would be useful sooner or later, so there's 
no need to delay that. Likewise testing of all the virt tools can be done any
time against your custom kernel builds in anticipation of it being officially
supported in fedora kernels.

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London    -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://deltacloud.org :|
|: http://autobuild.org        -o-         http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :|
|: GnuPG: 7D3B9505  -o-   F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 :|

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 08:55:13PM +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub
> entry 
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. 
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora 
>  virtualisation tools. 
We should be pretty good here.  And if there have been bugs or
regressions, then it would be a priority to fix them.  The whole aim
of libvirt and virt-tools is to be hypervisor independent after all.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into Xen guests.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v

[Don Dutile]

M A Young wrote:
>  I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen 
>  support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>  
>  The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for 
>  2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship 
>  with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15 
>  release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key 
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a 
>  Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in 
>  a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>  
>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be 
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for 
>  that would be very tight.
>  
>  The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make 
>  xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page 
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from 
>  when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but 
>  they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>  
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry 
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file. 
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora 
>  virtualisation tools.
>  
>  What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a 
>  feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should 
>  we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>  
>   	Michael Young
>  _______________________________________________
>  virt mailing list
>  virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt 
IMO, the pieces that the Xen folks have to whip into shape are the tools;
the missing kernel pieces are fairly well known (backend drivers), although Xen folks
are considering blkback in userspace instead of kernel space, so that may be
a new twist.

So, getting Xen support in the following 2 userspace tools is critical: qemu &
libvirt;
the latter means a new interface to xen libxc (dropping xend), so xen fixes can be
tracked to latest xen upstream.  I've seen a fair amt of activity to add xen support
to upstream qemu; I haven't been following libvirt devel to see if xen support to
libxc has been active or not (but would like to hear if so).

- Don

[M A Young]

On Mon, 8 Nov 2010, Don Dutile wrote:

>  IMO, the pieces that the Xen folks have to whip into shape are the
> tools;
>  the missing kernel pieces are fairly well known (backend drivers), although Xen folks
>  are considering blkback in userspace instead of kernel space, so that may be
>  a new twist. 
I did see a post which mentioned that qemu had blkback and netback and 
wondering if they would work with xen, but I don't know any more than 
that.

>  So, getting Xen support in the following 2 userspace tools is
> critical: 
>  qemu & libvirt; the latter means a new interface to xen libxc (dropping 
>  xend), so xen fixes can be tracked to latest xen upstream.  I've seen a 
>  fair amt of activity to add xen support to upstream qemu; I haven't been 
>  following libvirt devel to see if xen support to libxc has been active 
>  or not (but would like to hear if so). 
I think the line now is that xl/libxenlight is the way forward, eg. see
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2010-11/msg00352.html
Both the current xen (4.0.1) and the next (4.1, which might be the current 
version when F15 is released) will still have xend but it will deprecated 
in 4.1.

 	Michael Young

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On 11/09/10 20:44, M A Young wrote:
>  On Mon, 8 Nov 2010, Don Dutile wrote:
>
> > IMO, the pieces that the Xen folks have to whip into shape are the tools;
> > the missing kernel pieces are fairly well known (backend drivers), although Xen
> folks
> > are considering blkback in userspace instead of kernel space, so that may be
> > a new twist.
>
>  I did see a post which mentioned that qemu had blkback and netback and
>  wondering if they would work with xen, but I don't know any more than
>  that. 
Last time I tested they worked fine.  blkback should even provide 
reasonable performance.  netback most likely will be outperformed by far 
by the kernel's netback implementation.

cheers,
   Gerd

[Dor Laor]

On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>  I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
>  support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>
>  The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for
>  2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship
>  with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
>  release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a
>  Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in
>  a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>
>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for
>  that would be very tight.
>
>  The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make
>  xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from
>  when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but
>  they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file.
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
>  virtualisation tools.
>
>  What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
>  feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
>  we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora? 
Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready 
than ever.

>    	Michael Young
>  _______________________________________________
>  virt mailing list
>  virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Bill Davidsen]

Dor Laor wrote:
>  On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>     
> > I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
> > support as a feature for Fedora 15.
> >
> > The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for
> > 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship
> > with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
> > release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key
> > xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a
> > Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in
> > a Fedora version typically has one major update.
> >
> > If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
> > possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for
> > that would be very tight.
> >
> > The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make
> > xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from
> > when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but
> > they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
> >
> > I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry
> > for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file.
> > We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
> > virtualisation tools.
> >
> > What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
> > feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
> > we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
> >      
>  Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready
>  than ever.
>      
There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference 
between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware 
requirements of each.

-- 
Bill Davidsen<davidsen(a)tmr.com>
   "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
    used in creating them." - Einstein

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Andrew Cathrow]

----- Original Message -----
>  From: "Bill Davidsen" <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
>  To: dlaor(a)redhat.com
>  Cc: xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A Young"
> <m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk&gt;
>  Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM
>  Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
>  Dor Laor wrote:
>  > On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>  >
>  >> I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
>  >> support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>  >>
>  >> The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream
>  >> for
>  >> 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most
>  >> likely ship
>  >> with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
>  >> release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to
>  >> get key
>  >> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as
>  >> a
>  >> Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel
>  >> package in
>  >> a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>  >>
>  >> If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
>  >> possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale
>  >> for
>  >> that would be very tight.
>  >>
>  >> The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done
>  >> to make
>  >> xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
>  >> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans
>  >> from
>  >> when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to
>  >> Fedora, but
>  >> they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>  >>
>  >> I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub
>  >> entry
>  >> for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub
>  >> file.
>  >> We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
>  >> virtualisation tools.
>  >>
>  >> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
>  >> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else
>  >> should
>  >> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>  >>
>  > Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more
>  > ready
>  > than ever.
>  >
>  
>  There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
>  between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
>  requirements of each. 
re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V extensions certainly used
to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today even laptops come with this support.
And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have long-since passed.

>  
>  --
>  Bill Davidsen&lt;davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
>  "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
>  used in creating them." - Einstein
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  virt mailing list
>  virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 11/08/2010 06:02 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
>  ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Bill Davidsen"<davidsen(a)tmr.com>
> > To: dlaor(a)redhat.com
> > Cc: xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A
> Young"<m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk>
> > Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM
> > Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
> > Dor Laor wrote:
> >> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
> >>
> >>> I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
> >>> support as a feature for Fedora 15.
> >>>
> >>> The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream
> >>> for
> >>> 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most
> >>> likely ship
> >>> with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
> >>> release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to
> >>> get key
> >>> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as
> >>> a
> >>> Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel
> >>> package in
> >>> a Fedora version typically has one major update.
> >>>
> >>> If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
> >>> possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale
> >>> for
> >>> that would be very tight.
> >>>
> >>> The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done
> >>> to make
> >>> xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
> >>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans
> >>> from
> >>> when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to
> >>> Fedora, but
> >>> they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
> >>>
> >>> I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub
> >>> entry
> >>> for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub
> >>> file.
> >>> We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
> >>> virtualisation tools.
> >>>
> >>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
> >>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else
> >>> should
> >>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
> >>>
> >> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more
> >> ready
> >> than ever.
> >>
> >
> > There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
> > between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
> > requirements of each.
>
>  re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V extensions certainly used
> to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today even laptops come with this support.
>  And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have long-since passed.
Citations needed. I'm not saying what you claim isn't true but without data 
this opinion doesn't carry much weight.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Andrew Cathrow]

----- Original Message -----
>  From: "Dennis Jacobfeuerborn"
> <dennisml(a)conversis.de&gt;
>  To: "Andrew Cathrow" <acathrow(a)redhat.com&gt;
>  Cc: "Bill Davidsen" <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;, xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org,
> virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A Young"
>  <m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk&gt;
>  Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 1:59:54 PM
>  Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
>  On 11/08/2010 06:02 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  > ----- Original Message -----
>  >> From: "Bill Davidsen&quot;&lt;davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
>  >> To: dlaor(a)redhat.com
>  >> Cc: xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A
>  >> Young&quot;&lt;m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk&gt;
>  >> Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM
>  >> Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora
>  >> 15?
>  >> Dor Laor wrote:
>  >>> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>  >>>
>  >>>> I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0
>  >>>> xen
>  >>>> support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>  >>>>
>  >>>> The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream
>  >>>> for
>  >>>> 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most
>  >>>> likely ship
>  >>>> with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the
>  >>>> F15
>  >>>> release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan
>  >>>> to
>  >>>> get key
>  >>>> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable
>  >>>> as
>  >>>> a
>  >>>> Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel
>  >>>> package in
>  >>>> a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>  >>>>
>  >>>> If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just
>  >>>> be
>  >>>> possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the
>  >>>> timescale
>  >>>> for
>  >>>> that would be very tight.
>  >>>>
>  >>>> The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be
>  >>>> done
>  >>>> to make
>  >>>> xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
>  >>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains
>  >>>> plans
>  >>>> from
>  >>>> when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to
>  >>>> Fedora, but
>  >>>> they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>  >>>>
>  >>>> I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled
>  >>>> grub
>  >>>> entry
>  >>>> for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the
>  >>>> grub
>  >>>> file.
>  >>>> We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
>  >>>> virtualisation tools.
>  >>>>
>  >>>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as
>  >>>> a
>  >>>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what
>  >>>> else
>  >>>> should
>  >>>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>  >>>>
>  >>> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more
>  >>> ready
>  >>> than ever.
>  >>>
>  >>
>  >> There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
>  >> between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
>  >> requirements of each.
>  >
>  > re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V
>  > extensions certainly used to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today
>  > even laptops come with this support.
>  > And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have
>  > long-since passed.
>  
>  Citations needed. I'm not saying what you claim isn't true but without
>  data
>  this opinion doesn't carry much weight.
>   
Citations are really needed on both sides of the debate, 2 or 3 year old metrics no longer
apply.
Vendors published benchmarks are typically questionable, they focus on their products
strengths and their competitors weakness.
The only hope for a fair comparison is a vendor neutral set of benchmarks such as SPECvirt
 http://www.spec.org/virt_sc2010/
But obviously this isn't a simple test to run.


>  Regards,
>  Dennis

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 11/08/2010 08:29 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
>  ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Dennis Jacobfeuerborn"<dennisml(a)conversis.de>
> > To: "Andrew Cathrow"<acathrow(a)redhat.com>
> > Cc: "Bill Davidsen"<davidsen(a)tmr.com>, xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org,
> virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A Young"
> > <m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk&gt;
> > Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 1:59:54 PM
> > Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
> > On 11/08/2010 06:02 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> From: "Bill Davidsen&quot;&lt;davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
> >>> To: dlaor(a)redhat.com
> >>> Cc: xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A
> >>> Young&quot;&lt;m.a.young(a)durham.ac.uk&gt;
> >>> Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM
> >>> Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora
> >>> 15?
> >>> Dor Laor wrote:
> >>>> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0
> >>>>> xen
> >>>>> support as a feature for Fedora 15.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream
> >>>>> for
> >>>>> 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most
> >>>>> likely ship
> >>>>> with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the
> >>>>> F15
> >>>>> release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> get key
> >>>>> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable
> >>>>> as
> >>>>> a
> >>>>> Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel
> >>>>> package in
> >>>>> a Fedora version typically has one major update.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just
> >>>>> be
> >>>>> possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the
> >>>>> timescale
> >>>>> for
> >>>>> that would be very tight.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be
> >>>>> done
> >>>>> to make
> >>>>> xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
> >>>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains
> >>>>> plans
> >>>>> from
> >>>>> when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to
> >>>>> Fedora, but
> >>>>> they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled
> >>>>> grub
> >>>>> entry
> >>>>> for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the
> >>>>> grub
> >>>>> file.
> >>>>> We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
> >>>>> virtualisation tools.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as
> >>>>> a
> >>>>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what
> >>>>> else
> >>>>> should
> >>>>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
> >>>>>
> >>>> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more
> >>>> ready
> >>>> than ever.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
> >>> between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
> >>> requirements of each.
> >>
> >> re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V
> >> extensions certainly used to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today
> >> even laptops come with this support.
> >> And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have
> >> long-since passed.
> >
> > Citations needed. I'm not saying what you claim isn't true but without
> > data
> > this opinion doesn't carry much weight.
> >
>
>  Citations are really needed on both sides of the debate, 2 or 3 year old metrics no
> longer apply. 
Which is why I hoped I could nudge you into providing some data if you had 
any. :)
There seems to be very little recent and hard data on the subject out there.

>  Vendors published benchmarks are typically questionable, they focus
> on their products strengths and their competitors weakness.
>  The only hope for a fair comparison is a vendor neutral set of benchmarks such as
> SPECvirt  http://www.spec.org/virt_sc2010/
>  But obviously this isn't a simple test to run. 
AFAIK there are some issues with that benchmark not being free.

What I'm basically looking for is a simple comparison of a few key metrics 
between common setups. For example a simple bonnie++ run on XenPV and 
KVM+virtio_blk could already give people at least some baseline numbers.

Regards,
   Dennis

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Digimer]

On 10-11-09 11:49 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>  AFAIK there are some issues with that benchmark not being free.
>  
>  What I'm basically looking for is a simple comparison of a few key metrics 
>  between common setups. For example a simple bonnie++ run on XenPV and 
>  KVM+virtio_blk could already give people at least some baseline numbers.
>  
>  Regards,
>     Dennis 
I'd be happy to run some benchmarks. I've got some identical (if humble)
machines... Would you want just a Xen vs. KVM? If so, what parameters or
setup options would provide the best apples to apples comparison?

The machines are;
- quad core athlon II x4
- 4gb ddr3
- 1x 7200rom 500GB drive
- Fedora 14, stripped (but identical) installs

If these are too low end for useful results, let me know. Otherwise,
I'll fire up Xen under Michael's 2.6.32-25-172 kernel with the stock
4.0.1 hypervisor on one machine, and can use the stock KVM/QEMU setup
for another.

Assuming all is fine, would it matter whether the VMs were F14 vs CentOS
5.5?

I was thinking 3x runs each of;

- bonnie++
- Recompile Michael's kernel
- ?? Please make suggestions

-- 
Digimer
E-Mail: digimer(a)alteeve.com
AN!Whitepapers: http://alteeve.com
Node Assassin:  http://nodeassassin.org

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Bill Davidsen]

Digimer wrote:
>  On 10-11-09 11:49 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>     
> > AFAIK there are some issues with that benchmark not being free.
> >
> > What I'm basically looking for is a simple comparison of a few key metrics
> > between common setups. For example a simple bonnie++ run on XenPV and
> > KVM+virtio_blk could already give people at least some baseline numbers.
> >
> > Regards,
> >     Dennis
> >      
>  I'd be happy to run some benchmarks. I've got some identical (if humble)
>  machines... Would you want just a Xen vs. KVM? If so, what parameters or
>  setup options would provide the best apples to apples comparison?
>
>  The machines are;
>  - quad core athlon II x4
>  - 4gb ddr3
>  - 1x 7200rom 500GB drive
>  - Fedora 14, stripped (but identical) installs
>
>  If these are too low end for useful results, let me know. Otherwise,
>  I'll fire up Xen under Michael's 2.6.32-25-172 kernel with the stock
>  4.0.1 hypervisor on one machine, and can use the stock KVM/QEMU setup
>  for another.
>
>  Assuming all is fine, would it matter whether the VMs were F14 vs CentOS
>  5.5?
>
>  I was thinking 3x runs each of;
>
>  - bonnie++
>  - Recompile Michael's kernel
>  - ?? Please make suggestions
>
>      
Thanks for the offer. The services which have in the past shown 
significant differences (my experience) are small, with lots of connects 
and io. Examples are NNTP (ak usenet news) and POP mail servers. I 
suspect that DHCP and DNS have too little io to show the effect, but I 
never had enough load to know. Unless web service has a lot of dynamic 
content, I doubt it would have enough load to show the difference unless 
someone has server image and load generator to use. I could probably dig 
up a simulated load for NNTP, but I don't have an easy way to preload a 
server. My days of generating test loads were when I ran ISP NNTP 
servers and only had to provide test loading against the servers.

Performance aside, There is still a lot of old or small hardware that 
just can't do KVM at all, and which are easier to administer with a VM 
which can be moved.

-- 
Bill Davidsen<davidsen(a)tmr.com>
   "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
    used in creating them." - Einstein

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 11/09/2010 10:59 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>  Digimer wrote:
> > On 10-11-09 11:49 AM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> >> AFAIK there are some issues with that benchmark not being free.
> >>
> >> What I'm basically looking for is a simple comparison of a few key metrics
> >> between common setups. For example a simple bonnie++ run on XenPV and
> >> KVM+virtio_blk could already give people at least some baseline numbers.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Dennis
> > I'd be happy to run some benchmarks. I've got some identical (if humble)
> > machines... Would you want just a Xen vs. KVM? If so, what parameters or
> > setup options would provide the best apples to apples comparison?
> >
> > The machines are;
> > - quad core athlon II x4
> > - 4gb ddr3
> > - 1x 7200rom 500GB drive
> > - Fedora 14, stripped (but identical) installs
> >
> > If these are too low end for useful results, let me know. Otherwise,
> > I'll fire up Xen under Michael's 2.6.32-25-172 kernel with the stock
> > 4.0.1 hypervisor on one machine, and can use the stock KVM/QEMU setup
> > for another.
> >
> > Assuming all is fine, would it matter whether the VMs were F14 vs CentOS
> > 5.5?
> >
> > I was thinking 3x runs each of;
> >
> > - bonnie++
> > - Recompile Michael's kernel
> > - ?? Please make suggestions
> >
>  Thanks for the offer. The services which have in the past shown significant
>  differences (my experience) are small, with lots of connects and io.
>  Examples are NNTP (ak usenet news) and POP mail servers. I suspect that
>  DHCP and DNS have too little io to show the effect, but I never had enough
>  load to know. Unless web service has a lot of dynamic content, I doubt it
>  would have enough load to show the difference unless someone has server
>  image and load generator to use. I could probably dig up a simulated load
>  for NNTP, but I don't have an easy way to preload a server. My days of
>  generating test loads were when I ran ISP NNTP servers and only had to
>  provide test loading against the servers. 
I think these application level benchmarks should be considered second 
tier/optional because it's difficult to get realistic numbers for these.

When I'm looking for benchmarks I'm usually mostly interested in low-level 
ones because they are more easy to apply to my current situation.
If I run the mysql benchmarking suite then the results may or may not be 
indicative of what my app is actually doing. In comparison seeing that 
Hypervisor A has only 50% of the random-i/o performance of Hypervisor B 
then that can give you a good ballpark figure for all your applications 
depending on how dependent they are on random-i/o access.

In the networking case I would rather opt for a plain TCP/UDP benchmark 
that measures throughput and latency (and maybe connections per second) as 
these numbers are useful for people running any networking service.

As for OS and hardware configuration I think it's more important to get at 
least one run on each Hypervisor on the same os/hardware combination to 
make them comparable. I'd obviously prefer RHEL/Centos since that's what a 
lot of people run on their servers (including me) but I think Fedora would 
work just as well to at least get performance comparisons of the 
hypervisors relative to each other.

One important bit would be the parameters for the virtual machines as 
things like for example the cache configuration can have a great impact on 
the outcome i/o tests for example.

>  Performance aside, There is still a lot of old or small hardware that
> just
>  can't do KVM at all, and which are easier to administer with a VM which can
>  be moved.
>  
But how important is a benchmark in this case? If you want to move them to 
new hardware then you'd buy a machine with hardware virtualization support 
anyway and if you can't run the VM on new hardware then you probably should 
just run it on xen as you don't have a lot of options anyway.

I hope I'll eventually get my hand on a server that doesn't have to go into 
production the same day it is delivered so I'm certainly interested in 
participating but right now I could only deliver comparative benchmarks 
from desktop type systems and my new dual core intel 4gb 7200rpm drive 
notebook. Only really useful to pitch the hypervisors against each other in 
relative terms but the more data the better right?

Regards,
   Dennis

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 11:52:08AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>  Dor Laor wrote:
>  > On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>  >>
>  >> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
>  >> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
>  >> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>  >>      
>  > Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready
>  > than ever.
>  >    
>  
>  There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference 
>  between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware 
>  requirements of each. 
In any case, the question of whether KVM or Xen is best, is not really
relevant to whether Xen Dom0 has a place in F15. Fedora will welcome any 
software that meets the packaging & licensing guidelines, and has someone
who is willing to maintain it. So if people want to maintain Xen as an
alternative virtualization option in Fedora, they're welcome todo so.
KVM will of course remain the default virt host setup offered in the 
installer

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London    -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://deltacloud.org :|
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[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Bill Davidsen]

Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 11:52:08AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>     
> > Dor Laor wrote:
> >      
> >> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
> >>        
> >>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
> >>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
> >>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
> >>>
> >>>          
> >> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready
> >> than ever.
> >>
> >>        
> > There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
> > between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
> > requirements of each.
> >      
>  In any case, the question of whether KVM or Xen is best, is not really
>  relevant to whether Xen Dom0 has a place in F15. Fedora will welcome any
>  software that meets the packaging&  licensing guidelines, and has someone
>  who is willing to maintain it. So if people want to maintain Xen as an
>  alternative virtualization option in Fedora, they're welcome todo so.
>  KVM will of course remain the default virt host setup offered in the
>  installer
>      
Fine. The point I was making is that a non-trivial user base has 
hardware which does not support KVM, both legacy and recent low end CPUs 
like ATOM (and Celeron, I believe). And there is a fair amount of old 
hardware which does support KVM, but not all that well, like Q6600, 
which benefit from using xen. So while KVM may be a choice for recent 
hardware, there is a user base which would benefit from having xen.

And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to see if KVM 
is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
is fine.

-- 
Bill Davidsen<davidsen(a)tmr.com>
   "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
    used in creating them." - Einstein

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Boris Derzhavets]

>  And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to see if
> KVM 
>  is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
>  is fine. 
What if i don't want KVM install no matter of hardware ?
I will want Xen on icore7 + ASUS P6TDT+ 16 GB RAM , Dell PowerEdge and so on ... 

Boris

--- On Tue, 11/9/10, Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt; wrote:

From: Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen]  Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
To: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt;
Cc: xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2010, 11:21 AM

Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 11:52:08AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>     
> > Dor Laor wrote:
> >      
> >> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
> >>        
> >>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
> >>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
> >>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
> >>>
> >>>          
> >> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready
> >> than ever.
> >>
> >>        
> > There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
> > between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
> > requirements of each.
> >      
>  In any case, the question of whether KVM or Xen is best, is not really
>  relevant to whether Xen Dom0 has a place in F15. Fedora will welcome any
>  software that meets the packaging&  licensing guidelines, and has someone
>  who is willing to maintain it. So if people want to maintain Xen as an
>  alternative virtualization option in Fedora, they're welcome todo so.
>  KVM will of course remain the default virt host setup offered in the
>  installer
>      
Fine. The point I was making is that a non-trivial user base has 
hardware which does not support KVM, both legacy and recent low end CPUs 
like ATOM (and Celeron, I believe). And there is a fair amount of old 
hardware which does support KVM, but not all that well, like Q6600, 
which benefit from using xen. So while KVM may be a choice for recent 
hardware, there is a user base which would benefit from having xen.

And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to see if KVM 
is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
is fine.

-- 
Bill Davidsen&lt;davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
   "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
    used in creating them." - Einstein

_______________________________________________
virt mailing list
virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 10:40:10AM -0800, Boris Derzhavets wrote:
>  > And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to
> see if KVM 
>  > is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
>  > is fine.
>  
>  What if i don't want KVM install no matter of hardware ?
>  I will want Xen on icore7 + ASUS P6TDT+ 16 GB RAM , Dell PowerEdge and so on ...  
I guess you will have to manually yum install kernel-xen.  We can't
magically know your preference, but it makes sense to default to KVM
(by which I am really saying "default to a plain Linux kernel")
because that is far less intrusive for users.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 09:55:19AM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>  On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 10:40:10AM -0800, Boris Derzhavets wrote:
>  > > And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to see if KVM 
>  > > is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
>  > > is fine.
>  > 
>  > What if i don't want KVM install no matter of hardware ?
>  > I will want Xen on icore7 + ASUS P6TDT+ 16 GB RAM , Dell PowerEdge and so on ... 
>  
>  I guess you will have to manually yum install kernel-xen.  We can't
>  magically know your preference, but it makes sense to default to KVM
>  (by which I am really saying "default to a plain Linux kernel")
>  because that is far less intrusive for users. 
NB, there is no kernel-xen anymore with pvops dom0. To enable xen you
just need to yum install xen-hypervisor and update grub to boot the
kernel under the hypervisor

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London    -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://deltacloud.org :|
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[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Boris Derzhavets]

Config (.config) might be different for pvops kernel running as vanilla or under xen.

Boris.

--- On Wed, 11/10/10, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

From: Daniel P. Berrange <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt;
Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen]  Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
To: "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;
Cc: "Boris Derzhavets" <bderzhavets(a)yahoo.com&gt;, "Bill Davidsen"
<davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;, xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 5:30 AM

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 09:55:19AM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>  On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 10:40:10AM -0800, Boris Derzhavets wrote:
>  > > And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to see if KVM 
>  > > is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
>  > > is fine.
>  > 
>  > What if i don't want KVM install no matter of hardware ?
>  > I will want Xen on icore7 + ASUS P6TDT+ 16 GB RAM , Dell PowerEdge and so on ... 
>  
>  I guess you will have to manually yum install kernel-xen.  We can't
>  magically know your preference, but it makes sense to default to KVM
>  (by which I am really saying "default to a plain Linux kernel")
>  because that is far less intrusive for users. 
NB, there is no kernel-xen anymore with pvops dom0. To enable xen you
just need to yum install xen-hypervisor and update grub to boot the
kernel under the hypervisor

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London    -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://deltacloud.org :|
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[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 02:42:56AM -0800, Boris Derzhavets wrote:
>  Config (.config) might be different for pvops kernel running as
>  vanilla or under xen. 
The config is a build-time thing. When Dom0 pvops Xen is fully
merged into Fedora there will only be one single binary kernel
image & RPM, that supports both Xen and Native. ie There is to
be no separate kernel-xen at that time. Thus by definition there
is no different .config for Xen vs native.

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London    -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://deltacloud.org :|
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[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Boris Derzhavets]

Exactly, i only need on Fedora :)
# yum install kernel-xen

Boris.

--- On Wed, 11/10/10, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

From: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;
Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen]  Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
To: "Boris Derzhavets" <bderzhavets(a)yahoo.com&gt;
Cc: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt;, "Bill Davidsen"
<davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;, xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 4:55 AM

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 10:40:10AM -0800, Boris Derzhavets wrote:
>  > And I would hope that the installer would be clever enough to
> see if KVM 
>  > is supported and offer xen if not. Doesn't need to be default, available 
>  > is fine.
>  
>  What if i don't want KVM install no matter of hardware ?
>  I will want Xen on icore7 + ASUS P6TDT+ 16 GB RAM , Dell PowerEdge and so on ...  
I guess you will have to manually yum install kernel-xen.  We can't
magically know your preference, but it makes sense to default to KVM
(by which I am really saying "default to a plain Linux kernel")
because that is far less intrusive for users.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[fcxen user]

Dear Santa,

I don't have much, but I am willing to give up any and all of my Christmas 
presents if you can see your way to bring Christmas to a boy in the UK. You 
see, they have even less there in the UK - surveillance cameras everywhere to 
make sure they keep in line and boiled gruel twice a day if they are lucky. 
There is a boy, Michael, he works ever so hard - first shift at a coal mine 
and then second shift at a textile mill - and then after 2 10 hour shifts of 
backbreaking labor, he only has a couple hours per day by candle light while 
eating his nightly gruel to work on Xen for Fedora.

Mr. Scrooge and the other fat cats at Scrooge, Inc. tell Michael and the rest 
of us that we should be happy with their KVM. This, while dining on the finest 
roasted meats and full cream puddings in front of roaring fires fueled by wood 
gathered by orphans and widows paid in crust of week-old bread while  young, 
robust, well-fed hamsters on whale oiled wheels run their giant gleaming 
servers - you see Santa, our hamsters are gaunt, long-of-tooth and have only a 
portion of Michael's nightly gruel that he is able to share with them and alas 
we have no monies for whale blubber with which to oil their wheels.

The rich seem to believe that we press for Xen only through laziness or 
recalcitrance - I can assure you this is not the case, we have simple needs 
and wants, we ask not for full bodied HVM capable X5680s but only that our 
humble, yet proud and hardworking Core, Pentium and Opterons are not dumped on 
the ground and doused in kerosene that they might never be used again. We are 
not asking for luxury and riches, just humble tools that a man might fashion 
an honest day's work from what he has. These hopes ride on young Michael's 
work. They are not the sole hopes of Michael or me but the hopes of thousands, 
living lives of quiet desperation, hoping beyond hope that one call goes their 
way, of having one branch to grab onto.

Dearest Santa - please don't leave these desperate souls a lump of KVM in 
their stocking.

Thank you and god bless us every one!


On 11/8/10 8:00 AM, Dor Laor wrote:
>  On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
> > I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
> > support as a feature for Fedora 15.
> >
> > The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for
> > 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship
> > with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
> > release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key
> > xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a
> > Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in
> > a Fedora version typically has one major update.
> >
> > If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
> > possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for
> > that would be very tight.
> >
> > The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make
> > xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from
> > when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but
> > they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
> >
> > I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry
> > for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file.
> > We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
> > virtualisation tools.
> >
> > What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
> > feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
> > we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>
>  Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more ready
>  than ever.
>
> >
> >    	Michael Young
> > _______________________________________________
> > virt mailing list
> > virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt
>
>  --
>  xen mailing list
>  xen(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Digimer]

On 10-11-12 08:22 AM, fcxen user wrote:
>  Dear Santa,
>  
>  I don't have much, but I am willing to give up any and all of my Christmas 
>  presents if you can see your way to bring Christmas to a boy in the UK. You 
>  see, they have even less there in the UK - surveillance cameras everywhere to 
>  make sure they keep in line and boiled gruel twice a day if they are lucky. 
>  There is a boy, Michael, he works ever so hard - first shift at a coal mine 
>  and then second shift at a textile mill - and then after 2 10 hour shifts of 
>  backbreaking labor, he only has a couple hours per day by candle light while 
>  eating his nightly gruel to work on Xen for Fedora.
>  
>  Mr. Scrooge and the other fat cats at Scrooge, Inc. tell Michael and the rest 
>  of us that we should be happy with their KVM. This, while dining on the finest 
>  roasted meats and full cream puddings in front of roaring fires fueled by wood 
>  gathered by orphans and widows paid in crust of week-old bread while  young, 
>  robust, well-fed hamsters on whale oiled wheels run their giant gleaming 
>  servers - you see Santa, our hamsters are gaunt, long-of-tooth and have only a 
>  portion of Michael's nightly gruel that he is able to share with them and alas 
>  we have no monies for whale blubber with which to oil their wheels.
>  
>  The rich seem to believe that we press for Xen only through laziness or 
>  recalcitrance - I can assure you this is not the case, we have simple needs 
>  and wants, we ask not for full bodied HVM capable X5680s but only that our 
>  humble, yet proud and hardworking Core, Pentium and Opterons are not dumped on 
>  the ground and doused in kerosene that they might never be used again. We are 
>  not asking for luxury and riches, just humble tools that a man might fashion 
>  an honest day's work from what he has. These hopes ride on young Michael's 
>  work. They are not the sole hopes of Michael or me but the hopes of thousands, 
>  living lives of quiet desperation, hoping beyond hope that one call goes their 
>  way, of having one branch to grab onto.
>  
>  Dearest Santa - please don't leave these desperate souls a lump of KVM in 
>  their stocking.
>  
>  Thank you and god bless us every one! 
This made me laugh. Bravo! Someone obviously had their left brain firing
on all cylinders. :)

-- 
Digimer
E-Mail: digimer(a)alteeve.com
AN!Whitepapers: http://alteeve.com
Node Assassin:  http://nodeassassin.org

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Bill Davidsen]

M A Young wrote:
>  I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
>  support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>
>  The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream for
>  2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most likely ship
>  with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
>  release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to get key
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as a
>  Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel package in
>  a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>
>  If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
>  possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale for
>  that would be very tight.
>
>  The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done to make
>  xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans from
>  when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to Fedora, but
>  they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>
>  I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub entry
>  for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub file.
>  We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
>  virtualisation tools.
>
>  What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
>  feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else should
>  we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>
>    	Michael Young
>      
It would be gret if it could be made to happen, dare I say that the 
documentation hurdles seem more challenging than the technical issues? I 
believe the pieces will all be in mainstream by 2.6.38, and hopefully 
the last bits can be included as patches to 2.6.37 (in addition to 
what's there). It's a bit rough for medium experienced users at the moment.

-- 
Bill Davidsen<davidsen(a)tmr.com>
   "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we
    used in creating them." - Einstein

[Bill McGonigle]

On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
>  If the plan to get key
>  xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds 
With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't 
see these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a 
proposed patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday.

So, did we miss Fedora 15?

-Bill

-- 
Bill McGonigle, Owner
BFC Computing, LLC
http://bfccomputing.com/
Telephone: [phone]
Email, IM, VOIP: bill(a)bfccomputing.com
VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf
Social networks: bill_mcgonigle/bill.mcgonigle

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 09:34:50PM -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>  On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
>  > If the plan to get key
>  > xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds
>  
>  With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't 
>  see these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a 
>  proposed patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday.
>  
>  So, did we miss Fedora 15?
>   
Yep, netback most probably won't be in 2.6.38.

Upstreaming of the various dom0 bits needs to be done step-by-step,
the previous "everything at once" clearly didn't work.

netback could always be added as an out-of-tree patch,
or even some dkms module/rpm ?

-- Pasi

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 09:47:43AM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>  On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 09:34:50PM -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>  > On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
>  > > If the plan to get key
>  > > xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds
>  > 
>  > With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't
>
>  > see these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a 
>  > proposed patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday.
>  > 
>  > So, did we miss Fedora 15?
>  > 
>  
>  Yep, netback most probably won't be in 2.6.38.
>  
>  Upstreaming of the various dom0 bits needs to be done step-by-step,
>  the previous "everything at once" clearly didn't work.
>  
>  netback could always be added as an out-of-tree patch,
>  or even some dkms module/rpm ? 
If what is left of netback is a purely self-contained driver
module which doesn't touch any central kernel/arch code, then
I think you'd stand a good chance of convincing the Fedora
kernel maintainers to take it as a add-on patch to the
official kernels.

Daniel

[M A Young]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Bill McGonigle wrote:

>  On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
> > If the plan to get key
> > xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds
>
>  With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't see 
>  these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a proposed 
>  patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday. 
There was talk of userland netback and blkback in xen 4.1 which use the 
gntdev interface which did make it into 2.6.38 (userland blkback 
apparently gives the similar performance as the kernel one, netback is 
not as good). I am not sure of the details though, nor how you might use 
them if they are available.

 	Michael Young

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 08:39:46AM +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>  
>  > On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
>  >> If the plan to get key
>  >> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds
>  >
>  > With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't
> see 
>  > these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a proposed 
>  > patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday.
>  
>  There was talk of userland netback and blkback in xen 4.1 which use the 
>  gntdev interface which did make it into 2.6.38 (userland blkback 
>  apparently gives the similar performance as the kernel one, netback is 
>  not as good). I am not sure of the details though, nor how you might use 
>  them if they are available. 
Xen folks worked to give QEMU a userland netback/blkback implementation,
but I don't believe this functionality is integrated into the mgmt stack
at this time, so likely not much use yet.

Daniel

[Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:19:44AM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 08:39:46AM +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  > On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>  > 
>  > > On 11/07/2010 03:55 PM, M A Young wrote:
>  > >> If the plan to get key
>  > >> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds
>  > >
>  > > With the caveat that I don't really know what I'm looking for, I
> didn't see 
>  > > these make 2.6.38-rc1 (plenty of other Xen work, though).  I saw a proposed 
>  > > patch for netback hit xen-devel yesterday.
>  > 
>  > There was talk of userland netback and blkback in xen 4.1 which use the 
>  > gntdev interface which did make it into 2.6.38 (userland blkback 
>  > apparently gives the similar performance as the kernel one, netback is 
>  > not as good). I am not sure of the details though, nor how you might use 
>  > them if they are available.
>  
>  Xen folks worked to give QEMU a userland netback/blkback implementation,
>  but I don't believe this functionality is integrated into the mgmt stack
>  at this time, so likely not much use yet.
>   
userspace blkback is included in xen-unstable (4.1) !

Afaik xen-unstable automatically 'falls back' to userspace blkback
if kernel blkback is not available.

I'm not sure if xen-unstable also has userspace netback..

-- Pasi