[Xen-users] Re: 32 bit guests on 64 bit xen0 ?

[Sean Dague <japh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 08:32:25PM +0200, Petersson, Mats wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> > [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
> > Robert Hulme
> > Sent: 06 April 2006 18:36
> > To: Xen-users
> > Subject: [Xen-users] 32 bit guests on 64 bit xen0 ?
> > 
> > Is this currently possible?
> > 
> > I've just got 2 Opteron 265's that I'm about to put into a 4 
> > way server with 8GB of RAM.
> 
> No, your guest, in paravirtualized mode, will have to have the same
> bitness as your Xen kernel. There's been some discussions about adding a
> shim-layer to support 32-bit para-virtualized kernel on top of 64-bit
> Xen, but so far no one has added any actual support for it. 

In most cases its not really needed.  Because x86_64 can execute 32bit code
fine, I've done the following to have 32bit guests on 64bit system.

 * Grab a 32bit base image 
 * Boot it with a 64bit out of body kernel (i.e. from the dom0 filesystem)
 * Fix up the package tool to force updated packages to i386 instead of the
   detected arch.  This is pretty easy with Yum (Fedora), and URPMI
   (Mandriva)

It's "not quite" 32bit pure, but for most intents and purposes it should
give you what you want.

        -Sean

-- 
Sean Dague
IBM Linux Technology Center                     email: japh@xxxxxxxxxx
Open Hypervisor Team                           alt: sldague@xxxxxxxxxx

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