Re: [Xen-devel] Volunteers required for 4.2 TODO items (Re: 4.2 TODO update)

[Lin Ming <mlin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:40 AM, Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-03-12 at 16:00 +0000, Lin Ming wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> 
>> wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2012-03-12 at 12:11 +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
>> >> There are several things below which are in need of a volunteer to take 
>> >> care of them...
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm a newcomer.
>> Could you share more details about the requirements?
>>
>> >
>> > Specifically:
>> >
>> >> tools, blockers:
>> >> [...]
>> >>       * xl support for "rtc_timeoffset" and "localtime" (Nobody AFAICT)
>>
>> Are these parameters to be added for some xl subcommand?
>> What are they used for?
>
> These should be options which can be specified in the domain
> configuration file for HVM guests. They control the offset of the
> guest-visible emulated RTC from the host time -- IOW they control the
> time which the guest sees.
>
> These options are supported by xm/xend and need to be implemented for xl
> in a compatible way. This means exposing suitable fields in the libxl
> API (probably as fields in libxl_domain_build_info) and arranging for xl
> to parse the configuration file options.
>
> Some amount of reverse engineering of xend will be required to figure
> out what the actual meaning of those options in order to implement in a
> compatible way but AFAIK rtc_timeoffset is the offset between host time
> and guest time. localtime I think means to specify whether the emulted
> RTC appears as UTC or is offset by the host.
>
> Having figured out the meaning libxl needs to arrange to call
> xc_domain_set_time_offset with the right values.
>
> I think much of the related xend code is in
> tools/python/xen/xend/image.py but you might need to grep about a bit.
>
>> >>       * Domain 0 block attach & general hotplug when using qdisk backend
>> >>         (need to start qemu as necessary etc)
>> >> tools, nice to have:
>> >> [...]
>> >>       * xl support for autospawning vncviewer (vncviewer=1 or otherwise)
>>
>> Could you tell more detail?
>
> xm/xend supports a configuration file option "vncviewer=1" which causes
> xend to automatically spawn vncviewer with the correct options (e.g.
> port number) when doing "xm create". We would like the same for "xl
> create".
>
> As well as a config file option I think a command line option to "xl
> create" would also be useful, similar to '-c' which automatically
> connects to the virtual serial console. e.g '-V' perhaps.
>
> I guess we would want a libxl interface similar to
> libxl_primary_console_exec and xl support to call it when appropriate.
> overall it should look a lot like the console spawning stuff.
>
>> >>         (Nobody AFAICT)
>> >>       * support for vif "rate" parameter (No one, AFAICT)
>>
>> It's a kernel module parameter(xen-4.1.2/tools/vnet/vnet-module), right?
>
> I don't think so, this is network rate limiting as implemented by
> netback. Mathieu Gagné is already taking care of this so I won't go into
> any further detail (which is lucky, because I'm fuzzy about the details
> myself).
>
>>
>> >
>> > #1,#3 & #4 are reasonably simple libxl/xl features possibly suitable for
>> > a newcomer who is interested in getting started with toolstack level
>> > stuff.
>> >
>> > #2 is a bit more involved.
>> >
>> > Any takers?
>>
>> I'm a new comer and I'd like to get start from here.
>
> Please do let us know if you decide to take on one of the tasks.

Thanks for the detail explanation.
I take #1.

Do we have a deadline for the patch?
I'll need time to ramp up the code.

Thanks,
Lin Ming

>
> Ian.

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