Re: [Xen-users] Release 0.9.5 of GPL PV Drivers for Windows

[jim burns <jim_burn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday June 05 2008 06:51:20 am Geoff Wiener wrote:
> Thank you both for your feedback; both great ideas that I hadn't thought
> of!
>
>>James:  If you partition that disk image, then reboot the DomU, is the
>
>> disk image still partitioned when you reboot? What I'm getting it is are
>> writes going through?
>
> The short answer is "Yes" the partition persists, here is how I tested.

Ok, so basically, your tests show that formatting within the hvm works when 
booted w/o /gplpv, and does not when booted w/ /gplpv. It sounds like 
something is not being finalized by the gplpv drivers.

> Right click the partition on disk1, New Partition, Next, Primary
> Partition, Next
> Partition Size in MB:  2043 (default), Next
> Assign the following drive letter:      D: (default), Next
> Format this partition with the following settings:
> File System:            NTFS
> Allocation unit size:   Default
> Volume Label:           New Volume, Next
> Completing the New Partition Wizard, Finish

> The format command counts, quickly up to 100% then states:  The format
> did not complete successfully (OK), Click OK

I'm not familiar with Windows Server 'Disk Management', but it sounds like 
fdisk and format from a Windows desktop os all rolled into one. Is there an 
option to choose between 'quick' format, and 'thorough' format?

> Attempted to format the already partitioned disk and that failed.  
> Rebooted without the /gplpvl switch and formatted the disk, that worked.
[...]
> This problem is specific to formatting the disk from inside windows
> reading / writing to existing, formatted partitions in Windows.

> So now that we know what it is where do we start to troubleshoot this?
> Do we look at Xen or the GPLPV windows driver source code? As I have not

My impression is if formatting works on qemu, and not on xen pv, that we are 
hitting an untested case in gplpv.

James - have you tried formatting a xen pv disk? (I hope this is not another 
one of those 'works for some distros and not others' problem. I've noticed 
that there have been no complaints about qemu and xen pv both being loaded 
since the rewrite in the 0.9.0 series.)

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