Re: [Xen-devel] Xen on POWER

[George Dunlap <dunlapg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 12:17 PM, awokd <awokd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, March 9, 2018 12:04 pm, George Dunlap wrote:
>
>> I'm all for encouraging people to jump into Xen, but I agree with
>> Andre here, that you should really count the cost.  I doubt this is
>> the sort of thing a single person could really write and maintain unpaid on
>> evenings and weekends.  Remember also that you'd be porting not only Xen
>> to Power9, but also Linux (or some other operating system) to run as a Xen
>> dom0.
>
> I understand. I think Linux (with KVM) already works on baremetal Power9
> so it would "just" be Xen.
> https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/linuxonibm/liaam/liaamdistros.htm

I think you misunderstood me -- I didn't mean porting Linux to Power9
from scratch; I meant porting the Linux Power9 bare-metal to Linux
Power9 running as a Xen "domain 0".

The current Linux port (I'm guessing) expects to be in control of 100%
of the hardware.  But running as a "dom 0" under Xen, it wouldn't be.
A Linux dom0 is expected to provide device drivers for all devices,
but to ask Xen nicely for everything to do with CPUs, memory, and
interrupts.  That takes careful thought, and sometimes fairly invasive
changes to Linux.  Having the ARM dom0 work as a template should make
it easier, but it's by no means "already done".

> And I'm definitely not making any commitments this early. Worst case I'll
> fail but still learn a lot and have some nice server hardware.

Great! Have fun, and look forward to seeing patches. :-)

 -George

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