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Re: [Xen-devel] Re: Vertualization of Unmodified Operating Systems



Ronald G Minnich wrote:

Is there a VT or pacifica laptop out there? Or is that technology just "assumed" for later CPUs? I'd like to get such a laptop.

It seems to me that I could boot Plan 9 unmodified, and from there, develop the xenfront drivers I need, thus making test/debug much easier.

All Apple Intel based Macintosh computers have VT-x capability (as of April, 2006; I can't speak for future products). However, on some Mac Mini's a procedure is needed to enable VT-x. I have followed the procedure 'documented' (I use that word in the loosest of meanings, I assure you) with correct results:

http://forum.parallels.com/thread577.html

However, I do not know of anyone who has run Xen on top of EFI based Intel machines. EFI is Intel's replacement for BIOS. The acronym expands to Extended Firmware Interface. It's a much more powerful boot mechanism than BIOS and the tools for it are open sourced with the BSD license:

https://edk.tianocore.org/

In addition, in order to get Xen to work with Mac OS X as dom0, much work would have to go into porting the device drivers used for pciback, console, and other event channels; as well as porting the user applications. It's a non-trivial porting effort, but I'm quite sure there are those who have contemplated it. (Maybe there's a brave soul -doing- it?!)

-- Randy

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