Dom0 Xen kernel RPM

[M A Young]

I have built a kernel based on kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.fc11.src.rpm and 
Changeset 2342 from http://xenbits.xen.org/paravirt_ops/patches.hg/
and uploaded selected files which are at
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.fc10.s...
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.fc10.x...
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops23...

I got it to boot as Dom0 with a Rawhide based live CD image on a USB 
stick with several kernel tracebacks. I have not managed to get it to boot 
on my main Fedora 10 system either dom0 or as an ordinary kernel (but nor 
does the the unaltered kernel - presumably there is some incompatibility 
between Fedora 10 systems and Fedora 11 kernels that I haven't spotted 
yet), so you use it very much at your own risk.

 	Michael Young

[M A Young]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2009, M A Young wrote:

>  I have built a kernel based on kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.fc11.src.rpm
> and 
>  Changeset 2342 from http://xenbits.xen.org/paravirt_ops/patches.hg/
>  and uploaded selected files which are at
>  http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.fc10.s...
>  http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.fc10.x...
>
> http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops23...
>
>  I got it to boot as Dom0 with a Rawhide based live CD image on a USB stick 
>  with several kernel tracebacks. I have not managed to get it to boot on my 
>  main Fedora 10 system either dom0 or as an ordinary kernel (but nor does the 
>  the unaltered kernel - presumably there is some incompatibility between 
>  Fedora 10 systems and Fedora 11 kernels that I haven't spotted yet), so you 
>  use it very much at your own risk. 
It turns out (probably due to an overlooked "hg update") that those were 
actually based on changeset 2336. I have replaced them with the files 
below which really are based on changeset 2342, which contains a fix to a 
significant bug and reduces the kernel tracebacks I see from 3 (ignoring 
duplication) to 2. It actually boots (single user) for me as dom0 on my 
Fedora 10 system, though X crashed when I tried to go multiuser, and there 
seem to be a long delay due to some ata problems during boot.

 	Michael Young

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.1.fc10...
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.1.fc10...
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops23...

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 17:24 +0000, M A Young wrote:

>  It turns out (probably due to an overlooked "hg update")
> that those were 
>  actually based on changeset 2336. I have replaced them with the files 
>  below which really are based on changeset 2342, which contains a fix to a 
>  significant bug and reduces the kernel tracebacks I see from 3 (ignoring 
>  duplication) to 2. It actually boots (single user) for me as dom0 on my 
>  Fedora 10 system, though X crashed when I tried to go multiuser, and there 
>  seem to be a long delay due to some ata problems during boot. 
That sounds like excellent progress, well done!

I wonder are you planning on doing these builds regularly? Would it help
if you could do it as a branch in Fedora's pkgs CVS, build in koji and
host a yum repo on fedorapeople.org?

Cheers,
Mark.

[M A Young]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Mark McLoughlin wrote:

>  That sounds like excellent progress, well done! 
I am just tracking the pvops upstream, with a small amount of editing to 
get it to fit together with a Fedora kernel.

>  I wonder are you planning on doing these builds regularly? Would it
> help
>  if you could do it as a branch in Fedora's pkgs CVS, build in koji and
>  host a yum repo on fedorapeople.org? 
At the moment I am tracking it mainly for my own interest (and I don't 
know how long that interest will last), but I could certainly try to get 
it up onto a CVS branch (though I don't currently have a fedoraproject 
login). Howevere, it sounds from this post
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-02/msg00333.html
that a fair proportion of the dom0 patches may go into 2.6.29.

 	Michael Young

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 22:09 +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Mark McLoughlin wrote: 
>  > I wonder are you planning on doing these builds regularly? Would
> it help
>  > if you could do it as a branch in Fedora's pkgs CVS, build in koji and
>  > host a yum repo on fedorapeople.org?
>  
>  At the moment I am tracking it mainly for my own interest (and I don't 
>  know how long that interest will last), but I could certainly try to get 
>  it up onto a CVS branch (though I don't currently have a fedoraproject 
>  login). 
Cool, well creating a Fedora account is easy:

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join#Get_a_Fedora_Account

Once you've done that and requested to be added to the packager group,
let me know and I can sponsor you.

After that we just need to get you commit ACLs and you're good to go.


>   Howevere, it sounds from this post
>  http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-02/msg00333.html
>  that a fair proportion of the dom0 patches may go into 2.6.29. 
  "planning to get at least basic dom0 support into the next merge 
   window"

That means 2.6.30 - the merge window for 2.6.29 is closed.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Ján ONDREJ (SAL)]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 07:28:02AM +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>  On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 22:09 +0000, M A Young wrote:
>  > On Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>  
>  > > I wonder are you planning on doing these builds regularly? Would it help
>  > > if you could do it as a branch in Fedora's pkgs CVS, build in koji and
>  > > host a yum repo on fedorapeople.org?
>  > 
>  > At the moment I am tracking it mainly for my own interest (and I don't 
>  > know how long that interest will last), but I could certainly try to get 
>  > it up onto a CVS branch (though I don't currently have a fedoraproject 
>  > login).
>  
>  Cool, well creating a Fedora account is easy:
>  
>    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join#Get_a_Fedora_Account
>  
>  Once you've done that and requested to be added to the packager group,
>  let me know and I can sponsor you.
>  
>  After that we just need to get you commit ACLs and you're good to go. 
I can help him to do this (I am an fedora packager), but there is no
functional 2.6.29+ kernel for dom0. Also M.A.Young's rpm can't be compiled
on my i686 machine (aha1542 driver should me disabled, before it will be
fixed).

I am planning to support Fedora 10 kernel in my repository, but I can't make
progress with current kernels (tryed to recompile CentOS kernel,
kernel-2.6.27+xen (by suse) and 2.6.29 from mercurial without any success.

>  >  Howevere, it sounds from this post
>  > http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-02/msg00333.html
>  > that a fair proportion of the dom0 patches may go into 2.6.29.
>  
>    "planning to get at least basic dom0 support into the next merge 
>     window"
>  
>  That means 2.6.30 - the merge window for 2.6.29 is closed. 
Right.

There is no new patches for dom0 in 2.6.29, because Jeremy is moving code
from mercurial to git, but it in the middle of this work.
I am trying to daily update from mercurial and seeing also git status, but
no change in mercurial aprox. 5 days ago ang git does not contain dom0.

			SAL

[Gerd Hoffmann]

Jan ONDREJ (SAL) wrote:
>  I can help him to do this (I am an fedora packager), but there is no
>  functional 2.6.29+ kernel for dom0. 
Thats why I didn't even try to package it up.  At this point in time
this all is still very experimental and IMHO too far away from being usable.

I'm testing the kernels on two machines here. The i386 laptop doesn't
even boot.  The x86_64 box suffers from the mysterious ahci issue (sata
suddenly stops working at some point).

Also the network backend doesn't compile right now, so your guests can't
have network connectivity.  Also blktap isn't there yet.

>  There is no new patches for dom0 in 2.6.29, because Jeremy is moving
> code
>  from mercurial to git, but it in the middle of this work. 
He sends out pull requests already, queuing up xen stuff (and x86
cleanups)  in ingos tip tree.

If it goes well .30 boots as dom0 kernel.  I don't expect much of the
backend infrastructure makes it into .30 though (i.e. you need patches
to actually run guests).  At this point the changes needed might be
non-invasive enougth that it might be reasonable to carry them as
patches in the fedora kernel.

>  I am trying to daily update from mercurial and seeing also git
> status, but
>  no change in mercurial aprox. 5 days ago ang git does not contain dom0. 
Looks like the mercurial repo is dead.

cheers,
  Gerd

[M A Young]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:

>  Also the network backend doesn't compile right now, so your
> guests can't
>  have network connectivity. 
I think it does if you pick the right combination of options. I am not at 
my development box right now, but from what I remember there are some 
dependencies missing from the configuration options meaning that you can 
pick combinations of module/non-module configurations that don't build. (I 
guess I should probably identify these more precisely and report them 
upstream).

 	Michael Young

[M A Young]

I tweaked a couple of configuration settings in my previous kernel to get 
an i686 kernel to build (links below). I tried it and found two main 
problems;
* the ATA driver is serious enough in this case to stop disk access
* when I booted off a USB image logging to a serial console, it booted 
eventually, and from the way the cursor responded to the keyboard, I think 
there was a login session on the monitor, but everything except the cursor 
was blank (as if there was black text on a black screen), which might 
point to an issue with the frame buffer console drivers.

I am also told that xend doesn't start for my kernels. This may be a real 
problem, or it may be necessary to load the right modules before it will 
start.

 	Michael Young

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.2.fc10...
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-PAE-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops2342.2....
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~may/xen/kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.41.rc2.pvops23...