Re: Xen-ARM DomUs

[Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020, Elliott Mitchell wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 08:36:34AM -0800, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Dec 2020, Elliott Mitchell wrote:
> > > The available examples seem geared towards Linux DomUs.  I'm looking at a
> > > FreeBSD installation image and it appears to expect an EFI firmware.
> > > Beyond having a bunch of files appearing oriented towards booting on EFI
> > > I can't say much about (booting) FreeBSD/ARM DomUs.
> > 
> > Running EFI firmware in a domU is possible with both Tianocore and
> > U-Boot. You should be able to build the firmware and pass it as a
> > kernel= binary in the xl file. Then the firmware will be able to load
> > the necessary binaries from the virtual disk.
> 
> Hmm, no mention of this on:
> https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/OVMF
> 
> In fact that appears 100% x86.  Perhaps tools/firmware needs to be
> adjusted to make it work on ARM?
> 
> Really the xlexample files in tools/examples need equivalents for ARM...
> 
> *This* reads like the approach I'm looking for, but building Tianocore
> is an adventure even with a good guide.

Tianocore has been working for many years as domU kernel, but I haven't
tried it in a while. You should definitely be able to get it to boot.
Linaro offers pre-built binaries of it with Xen enabled:

http://snapshots.linaro.org/components/kernel/leg-virt-tianocore-edk2-upstream/4123/XEN-AARCH64/RELEASE_GCC5/


> > I ran Tianocore this way years ago. Recently, u-boot has been ported to
> > be run in a domU by Oleksandr Andrushchenko (CCed).
> 
> The Xen wiki has no information on this.

This is relatively new. Maybe Oleksandr should add a page to the wiki
when he gets a chance :-)