F10 crystal ball gazing

[Andy Burns]

Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?

xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
kernel 2.6.27(or late rc) with pv_ops for 32 and 64 bit, dom0 and domU?
oVirt?
updates to libvirt/virt-manager as usual

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 22:24 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

>  Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release
> ~August
>  is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10? 
There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late, so
it's getting harder to imagine it being in shape for Fedora 10. Still
hope, for sure, but getting slimmer.

>  xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
Not really important if there's no Dom0 kernel. If there is, we'll
definitely update.

>  kernel 2.6.27(or late rc) with pv_ops for 32 and 64 bit, dom0 and
> domU? 
I would expect our DomU kernel to continue tracking the bare-metal
kernel versions - so, yeah, 2.6.27 probably.

Jeremy Fitzhardinge sounds fairly confident of having much of x86_64
DomU ready for the 2.6.27 merge window. If that happens, our patch set
would be quite small and I'd imagine we'd enable CONFIG_XEN in the
bare-metal kernel and drop the kernel-xen package.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Andy Burns]

2008/7/5 Mark McLoughlin <markmc(a)redhat.com&gt;:

>  There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late
Oh, I thought from reading some of the Xen Summit slides that xen3.3
would mean pv_ops becoming the default for dom0 as well as domU.

>  it's getting harder to imagine it being in shape for Fedora 10
Gulp, that tightens the noose on those of us with fedora 8 dom0 machines.

>  I would expect our DomU kernel to continue tracking the bare-metal
>  kernel versions - so, yeah, 2.6.27 probably.
>
>  Jeremy Fitzhardinge sounds fairly confident of having much of x86_64
>  DomU ready for the 2.6.27 merge window. If that happens, our patch set
>  would be quite small and I'd imagine we'd enable CONFIG_XEN in the
>  bare-metal kernel and drop the kernel-xen package. 
Some potential good news then, thanks for the info.

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 15:23 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  2008/7/5 Mark McLoughlin <markmc(a)redhat.com&gt;:
>  
>  > There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late
>  
>  Oh, I thought from reading some of the Xen Summit slides that xen3.3
>  would mean pv_ops becoming the default for dom0 as well as domU. 
Here's the slides from the talk Stephen and I gave:

  http://markmc.fedorapeople.org/XenSummit.pdf

Cheers,
Mark.

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release
> ~August
>  is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  
>  xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2? 
Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough to
have hardware which works with it.

>  oVirt? 
As far as most of the development work is concerned, oVirt is KVM based.
Hypervisors are really becoming comoditized and the interesting stuff is
occcurring in the management tools. As such oVirt development effort is
best spent on the management tools and not on porting to multiple differnt
hypervisors at this time. 

>  updates to libvirt/virt-manager as usual 
Whatever the latest versions at time of freeze will be included.

Daniel
-- 
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|: http://libvirt.org  -o-  http://virt-manager.org  -o-  http://ovirt.org :|
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[Andy Burns]

2008/7/5 Mark McLoughlin <markmc(a)redhat.com&gt;:

>  Here's the slides from the talk Stephen and I gave: 
That's quite bleak (but honest) I had considered KVM, I tried it on
fedora9 but it doesn't have PCI passthrough yet (unless I'm
out-of-date) and also I have some xen servers at work, so keeping the
number of hypervisors down seemed a good idea when installing a home
server.

Just watched the video of your talk, an it does sound quite so bleak.

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 11:39:27AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>  On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 22:24 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  
>  > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  
>  There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late, so
>  it's getting harder to imagine it being in shape for Fedora 10. Still
>  hope, for sure, but getting slimmer.
>   
Hmm.. I thought there was 2 fulltime developers at redhat/fedora working with
dom0 stuff.. mentioned in some other mail on this list.

Is there some bigger problem with dom0 work? 

-- Pasi

[Felix Schwarz]

Pasi Kärkkäinen schrieb:
>  Hmm.. I thought there was 2 fulltime developers at redhat/fedora
> working with
>  dom0 stuff.. mentioned in some other mail on this list.
>  
>  Is there some bigger problem with dom0 work?  
As I understand it the whole paravirt_ops/Dom0 is pretty much a complete 
rewrite of Xen's kernel part given the old 2.6.18 base and all the things to 
work out with paravirt_ops (even without all the 'special' features like PCI 
pass through etc).

Furthermore I guess that there is a lot of ground work to evolve the 
paravirt_ops interfaces etc so that the new port does not need to much kernel 
patching.

Given all the circumstances, two full-time developers aren't that many and 
getting something in the mainline kernel is never easy...

fs

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > 
>  > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  
>  Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough to
>  have hardware which works with it.
>   
If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 

Would be better than nothing.. 

Is there something with pv_ops dom0 work that could be done to help? What's
the status atm? 

-- Pasi

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:07:15AM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>  On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  > On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > > 
>  > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > 
>  > Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  > RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  > Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough to
>  > have hardware which works with it.
>  > 
>  
>  If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
>  xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 
>  
>  Would be better than nothing.. 
>   
Or maybe rhel5 kernel? 

I understand maintaining multiple kernels is a pain, but then again rhel5
(and xensource 2.6.18 xen) kernels are maintained anyway upstream..

-- Pasi

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:07:15AM +0300, Pasi K?rkk?inen wrote:
>  On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  > On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > > 
>  > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > 
>  > Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  > RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  > Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough to
>  > have hardware which works with it.
>  > 
>  
>  If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
>  xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 
>  
>  Would be better than nothing..  
No, it is worse than nothing. It is incompatible with a large number of
userspace packages which expect interfaces/ABIs from newer kernel versions
and thus uttery unsupportable. 

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

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:26:12AM +0300, Pasi K?rkk?inen wrote:
>  On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:07:15AM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>  > On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  > > On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > > > 
>  > > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > > 
>  > > Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  > > RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  > > Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough
> to
>  > > have hardware which works with it.
>  > > 
>  > 
>  > If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
>  > xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 
>  > 
>  > Would be better than nothing.. 
>  
>  Or maybe rhel5 kernel?  
No, this is no better - it is still 2.6.18 based which is unsupportable
when Fedora is in 2.6.26

>  I understand maintaining multiple kernels is a pain, but then again
> rhel5
>  (and xensource 2.6.18 xen) kernels are maintained anyway upstream.. 
It is not just multiple kernels - it is the age of the kernels - a kernel
which is 8 versions behind the non-Xen kernel is not supportable.

The situation is either Dom0 pv_ops, or no Dom0 at all. Those are the
only two viable options that exist. We can't continue to waste effort
on something as old as 2.6.18

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

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:51:53AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:26:12AM +0300, Pasi K?rkk?inen wrote:
>  > On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:07:15AM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>  > > On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  > > > On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > > > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release
> ~August
>  > > > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > > > > 
>  > > > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > > > 
>  > > > Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the
> xen
>  > > > RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  > > > Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky
> enough to
>  > > > have hardware which works with it.
>  > > > 
>  > > 
>  > > If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
>  > > xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 
>  > > 
>  > > Would be better than nothing.. 
>  > 
>  > Or maybe rhel5 kernel? 
>  
>  No, this is no better - it is still 2.6.18 based which is unsupportable
>  when Fedora is in 2.6.26
>   
Ok.

>  > I understand maintaining multiple kernels is a pain, but then
> again rhel5
>  > (and xensource 2.6.18 xen) kernels are maintained anyway upstream..
>  
>  It is not just multiple kernels - it is the age of the kernels - a kernel
>  which is 8 versions behind the non-Xen kernel is not supportable.
>   
Yep.. I guess it would create too many problems with other packages/software
assuming/needing something from the kernel. 

>  The situation is either Dom0 pv_ops, or no Dom0 at all. Those are
> the
>  only two viable options that exist. We can't continue to waste effort
>  on something as old as 2.6.18
>   
Ok. 

Thanks for clearing this up (again) :)

Now I just wish all the best for pv_ops dom0 work.. 

Anything people could help with? Any status updates? 

-- Pasi

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 09:47:48AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:07:15AM +0300, Pasi K?rkk?inen wrote:
>  > On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  > > On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > > > 
>  > > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > > 
>  > > Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  > > RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  > > Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough
> to
>  > > have hardware which works with it.
>  > > 
>  > 
>  > If pv_ops dom0 won't be ready for F10, would it be possible to ship
>  > xensource 2.6.18 based dom0 kernel? At least that's supported upstream.. 
>  > 
>  > Would be better than nothing.. 
>  
>  No, it is worse than nothing. It is incompatible with a large number of
>  userspace packages which expect interfaces/ABIs from newer kernel versions
>  and thus uttery unsupportable. 
>   
Yeah well, that makes sense.. damn, really crappy situation right now with kernels
compatible with xen dom0 :(

-- Pasi

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 11:39:27AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>  On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 22:24 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  
>  > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  
>  There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late, so
>  it's getting harder to imagine it being in shape for Fedora 10. Still
>  hope, for sure, but getting slimmer.
>  
>  > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  
>  Not really important if there's no Dom0 kernel. If there is, we'll
>  definitely update.
>  
>  > kernel 2.6.27(or late rc) with pv_ops for 32 and 64 bit, dom0 and domU?
>  
>  I would expect our DomU kernel to continue tracking the bare-metal
>  kernel versions - so, yeah, 2.6.27 probably.
>  
>  Jeremy Fitzhardinge sounds fairly confident of having much of x86_64
>  DomU ready for the 2.6.27 merge window. If that happens, our patch set
>  would be quite small and I'd imagine we'd enable CONFIG_XEN in the
>  bare-metal kernel and drop the kernel-xen package.
>   
At the moment it looks like x86_64 xen domU patches are going in for 2.6.27.

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/x86/linux-2.6-tip.git;a=summary

and

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenParavirtOps

-- Pasi

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Wed, 2008-07-16 at 15:36 +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>  On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 11:39:27AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>  > On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 22:24 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > 
>  > > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > 
>  > There has been very little progress on the Dom0 pv_ops work of late, so
>  > it's getting harder to imagine it being in shape for Fedora 10. Still
>  > hope, for sure, but getting slimmer.
>  > 
>  > > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  > 
>  > Not really important if there's no Dom0 kernel. If there is, we'll
>  > definitely update.
>  > 
>  > > kernel 2.6.27(or late rc) with pv_ops for 32 and 64 bit, dom0 and domU?
>  > 
>  > I would expect our DomU kernel to continue tracking the bare-metal
>  > kernel versions - so, yeah, 2.6.27 probably.
>  > 
>  > Jeremy Fitzhardinge sounds fairly confident of having much of x86_64
>  > DomU ready for the 2.6.27 merge window. If that happens, our patch set
>  > would be quite small and I'd imagine we'd enable CONFIG_XEN in the
>  > bare-metal kernel and drop the kernel-xen package.
>  > 
>  
>  At the moment it looks like x86_64 xen domU patches are going in for 2.6.27.
>  
>  http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/x86/linux-2.6-tip.git;a=summary
>  
>  and
>  
>  http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenParavirtOps 
Yep, and that's excellent progress. As soon as the stock rawhide kernel
makes its first move to 2.6.27, I plan to build a new kernel-xen based
on that.

What we're discussing currently, though, is whether at that point we
should immediately progress with the plan of merging kernel-xen back
into the stock kernel so that you boot the same pv_ops enabled kernel
for Xen DomU and bare-metal.

If it looks like the Dom0 work is making progress, we might hold off on
doing that until Dom0 is upstream. Personally, I can't see Dom0 being in
shape for F10 and so we should proceed with completing the DomU work.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 05:45:51PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>  On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  > Given that xen is entering feature freeze for updated release ~August
>  > is it too early to ask what the *hopes* are for xen in fedora10?
>  > 
>  > xen 3.3.0 (or late rc) or is this still likely to be 3.2.1 or 3.2.2?
>  
>  Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen
>  RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy
>  Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel if they're lucky enough to
>  have hardware which works with it.
>   
It looks like Xen 3.3.0 final might be released in a couple of days..
assuming everything goes fine with rc5. 

http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-08/msg00644.html
http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg

-- Pasi

[Andy Burns]

2008/8/17 Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik(a)iki.fi&gt;:

>  It looks like Xen 3.3.0 final might be released in a couple of
> days..
>  assuming everything goes fine with rc5. 
Yes, I've been looking at the mercurial tree, but haven't checked a
version out, would be easier if there were tarballs available for the
-rc versions, I'll probably try building it on a CentOS 5.2 host,
unfortunately I'm down to only one Fedora Xen host now.

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:44:29PM +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>  2008/8/17 Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik(a)iki.fi&gt;:
>  
>  > It looks like Xen 3.3.0 final might be released in a couple of days..
>  > assuming everything goes fine with rc5.
>  
>  Yes, I've been looking at the mercurial tree, but haven't checked a
>  version out, would be easier if there were tarballs available for the
>  -rc versions, I'll probably try building it on a CentOS 5.2 host,
>  unfortunately I'm down to only one Fedora Xen host now.
>   
Just a heads up.. Xen 3.3.0 final has been released!

-- Pasi