[Xen-devel] Re: NetBSD port updated

[Ian Pratt <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I think we should try to merge netbsd_build and linux_build into a
> > 'guest_build' that autodetects based on kernel-image format.
> 
> yes...  but why are you not using the elf loader for Linux as well?  The
> XenoGues format doesn't contain any additional information since the
> 0xc0000000 is in the elf header...

The main purpose of the 'XenoGuess' header was to be able to
detect people trying to load standard x86 kernel builds rather
than x86-xeno ones. I guess we could achieve the same effect
within the elf format e.g. by defining some special symbol the
loader looks for.

> I think for NetBSD in domain0 I'll use the elf loader code to build an
> elf->XenoGues translator...  Or would it be easy enough to add the elf
> loader for domain0 as well?  I assume this is the original motivation for
> the XenoGues format?

I think maintaining the same format for domain 0 and for domains
started from user space domains is very important. It might well
make sense to put a minimal elf loader in Xen and make that the
standard format for 1.3.  I don't think there are any issues with
Grub as it doesn't look inside a module loading.

BTW: I've had your latest netbsd build up and running with the
current 1.2 tree -- it works great!  However, it might be worth
updating the web page to reveal the root password for the minimal
root file system ;-)

> I haven't thought about save/restore, but its possible the
> Linux functions may just work.

Having actually thought for 1ns I realised that save/restore is
OS specific, so currently won't work. Also, in xc_dom_control
where we currently do the 'save' we don't know what type the
domain is.  That might be an argument for moving save to
xc_dom_create for the time being.

Of course, this will all be much neater in rev 3 of the domain
control tools that will use a db backend to maintain state about
currently running domains across a cluster...

Ian

 



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