On Sat, 2 Apr 2011, Jon wrote:
Is it possible to use the latest kernel.org kernel, 2.6.38-2, for xen-4.0.1 or xen-4.1 or should I compile the kernel from git? If it is the latter, what is the preferred method and is there a doc explaining the steps? I am running Scientific Linux 6 and would like to use the latest stable xen and kernel if possible.
2.6.38 is missing xen net and block backends pre-2.6.39 adds the net backend 2.6.40 is expected to add the block backend. In addition xen 4.1 supports a user level block backend though this is slow and can bring the guest to a halt in some cases.
Thus out-of-the-box xen 4.1 and pre-2.6.39 should be usable for xen provided slow disk access isn't a problem. However for practical use you might be better using one a xen patched kernel, such as the 2.6.32 one I built recently based on the Fedora 12 kernel code (plus updates and xen patches) at http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/myoung/dom0-kernel/ or build your own from git, eg. from http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/jeremy/xen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/h...
The xen.org site mentions plans to produce dom0 kernel and xen packages for RHEL6 (see http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XenDom0Kernels ) though I imagine it will be a few weeks before that happens.
Michael Young