Xen project Mailing List

Re: [Xen-users] Re: [Xen-devel] State of Xen in upstream Linux

To: "Jeremy Fitzhardinge" <jeremy@xxxxxxxx>

From: "Grant McWilliams" <grantmasterflash@xxxxxxxxx>

Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:07:26 -0700

Cc: Alexey Eremenko <al4321@xxxxxxxxx>, Virtualization Mailing List <virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx>, xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Grant McWilliams wrote:
> Vbox OSE has full source available. I was working on a contract for a
> corporation and was in the stage
> of deciding which virtualization platform to run and installed Vbox in
> a Xen system (running Xen). The installer
> loaded the vbox driver (As well as set it up to load automatically)
> and sent the server into a continuous reboot. Unfortunately this was
> in a Datacenter that I had no physical access to. The Vbox developers
> jumped all over me when I suggested that it was a bug.
> When running Xen the VMware interface will come up and the driver will
> load but the VMs just don't start. It seems like
> that would be a much better situation than causing the entire machine
> to crash. Seems like a Vbox problem. It was run in Dom0.

Yes, that sounds like an inherently unstable configuration. I don't
know anything about how VBox operates internally, but whatever pagetable
management scheme they're using will quite likely not work under Xen
without a lot of care. The best we can do in that case is try to make
sure that VBox doesn't attempt to come up.

If they don't rely on VT/SVM, then it may work from within a Xen hvm
domain, but I don't know what benefit that would have. What were you
trying to achieve by running VBox in dom0?

J

I wasn't really trying to run VBox in the dom0. I'd been running the Xen kernel so long that I'd forgotten which
kernel I was on. Like I said when you start VMware the guest OS just doesn't run which gives you a second
to ponder why. VBox uses VT/SVM if you check a box in the config. It was not checked when it
crashed the server.

Depending on the application I use VBox or Xen for virtualization projects. VBox acts as an HVM most of the time
so it's great for those times I'm virtualizing a product that I have no control over. Xen is best for environments
that I do have control over.

Grant McWilliams

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