Re: [Xen-devel] XEN CD --> USB stick

[Mark Williamson <Mark.Williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> One of the reasons we consider this important is because
> the cdrom drive on our Bladecenter platforms is a USB
> device, and we would like to resolve the various issues
> required to use it from the guest OS. This not only
> covers the USB support in some form, but also issues
> with removable media, installing software on the guest
> domains directly from CD, etc. There are currently
> workarounds for some of these requirements, but I'd
> really like to see 2.6 USB working and stable.

Ah, I see.  I'm hopeful that CD ROM drives will require relatively little 
"magic" to make them work correctly under virtualisation.

Of course, the other way to go from your PoV would be to add some extra 
functionality to the VBD driver to better support CDs.  That would probably 
be useful for other purposes (e.g. exposing ISOs as CD drives) that people 
want to do.

Do you mean that this USB CDROM drive is actually integrated into the blade 
enclosure?  How is it shared among blades?  Or is it just that the standard 
means of installing software is to plug in a USB CDROM (that's what we used 
to do on our blades).

> We have some testing on our roadmap, but given the sheer
> range of USB devices and issues related to them, it will
> be a matter of having people test their own hw.

Yes, that's my feeling also.  I think that the additional emulation of 
control-plane stuff required to support the "problem" devices will be common 
to most (all?) troublesome devices.

> To that 
> end, it will help to have some code in the tree for
> people to play around with earlier rather than later,
> because it will help stabilize the code to get a larger
> group of people testing it..

I agree.

> > Bottom line: people who want to play with USB virtualisation should be
> > able to do so successfully but should bear in mind it's experimental.
>
> So I did like Ian's idea of putting whatever's working, no
> matter how minimal (with a LOT of caveats and warnings),
> into the tree. You and Harry are the best judge of when it's
> ready to go in, of course, but I would appreciate an early
> push :)..

I'd certainly be in favour of pushing support into the tree as soon as 
something's working reliably for us.  I'd like to support the "awkward" 
devices later on.

Cheers,
Mark


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