Re: [Xen-users] FreeBSD domU

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there,

Just a heads-up: it's better if you just post to xen-users or xen-devel 
initially, and then post to the other one if you think you made the wrong 
decision.

> I have a vanilla FreeBSD kernel. I want to patch it to make it domU
> kernel. How do I patch it ?

There are some details about the Xen port on the FreeBSD wiki, here:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/Xen

It looks like the Xen architecture code is in a Perforce (p4) repository 
called //projects/xen3.  It looks like the Freebsd p4 repositories live here: 
http://perforce.freebsd.org/

I remember that it was still in a separate repository because there was still 
some integration work required to make the Xen drivers play nicely with 
Newbus, so the code wasn't clean enough to be in mainline FreeBSD.

From the wiki page it sounds like the code mightn't work with newer GCCs and 
that there are some other bugs present.  There also seems to be a patch on 
the wiki adding Xen support if you don't want to use perforce, although I 
don't know how up-to-date it is.

> Need I make any changes to that image /config  to boot it up with
> xen0linux.

I'm afraid I'm not a FreeBSD user and have never built a FreeBSD kernel.  It 
sounds like although much of the code required for FreeBSD to work on Xen has 
been written, it's not quite finished and it's not going to be very easy to 
get a kernel up and running on Xen.

Googling around may find you other information, some of which will be 
outdated.  This howto: http://www.yuanjue.net/xen/howto.html supplies some 
example kernels and some instructions, but it doesn't say what version of Xen 
it works with.  Also, last time I did try to load a FreeBSD kernel in Xen I 
had some compatibility issues with the domain builder and couldn't make it 
load. :-(

Basically, most of the code required to run FreeBSD on Xen is at least 
available, although not integrated with the latest and greatest FreeBSD code 
because it's still in a separate repository and hasn't made much visible 
progress in a while.  For a sufficiently motivated hacker who's potentially 
willing to fiddle with the Xen domain builder it may be possible to get it 
booting.  But I would expect it to be a bit of an involved project.

Sorry not to be more positive.  I hope that in the future someone will be able 
to finish off the FreeBSD port in order to make this all easier to work with.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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