[Xen-users] issues with pvh mode for dom0 and domU on xen 4.5.0 / kernel 3.18.9

[Atom2 <ariel.atom2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi guys,
I recently switched from xen 4.4.2 to 4.5.0 after it became stable on 
gentoo (kernel version is 3.18.9) and thought I'd give pvh for both dom0 
and domUs a spin - unfortunately with not too much success:

DOM0:
For dom0 I simply added dom0pvh=1 to the xen command line. The system 
booted up and I was also able to confirm that dom0 is running in the 
correct mode by checking with xen-detect.
What I however found out is that xen creates a bunch of error/warning 
messages some of which make it to xl's dmesg file (the majority seems to 
get dropped due to rate limits). None of these messages are there when 
started without dom0pvh=1. Please see the two attached files for a 
comparision between the xl dmesg for PVH ("dmesg.xl.pvh") and the xl 
dmesg in non-PVH mode ("dmesg.xl").
There are a few (most likely irrelevant) differences at line 109 to 111 
relating to messages about the "Start info", the "Page tables", and the 
"Boot stack". The main difference is in the additional lines in the file 
"dmesg.xl.pvh" on line numbers 121-122 and 124-156 including 8 lines 
about suppressed messages totalling in excess of 236.000 (ignored) 
messages.  It's probably worth noteing that no further messages make it 
to xl's dmesg and also /var/log/messages does not have anything strange 
once the dom0 is up and running.
It, however, appears that the pvh dom0 compared to the standard dom0 
consumes _significantly_ more CPU time as shown by "xl info" from within 
dom0 - which to me seems counter-intuitive given my (limited) 
understanding of what pvh tries to achieve.

DOMU:
For a test domU I just added pvh=1 to it's (otherwise unchanged) 
configuration file and tried to start the domU by issuing
xl -v -v -v /path/to/config/file -c

The domU did not come up at all (but works flawlessly when commenting 
out the pvh=1 configuration line); details of the xl command output for 
the failed attempt can be found in the attached file xl.domU. I honestly 
can't make much sense out of the error message which in essence seems to 
complain about an unsupported feature and a missing file or directory 
before giving up.
I understand that pvh is pretty new and probably not yet ready for prime 
time, but I'd nevertheless appreciate any input/help on what's going on 
here or what I am doing wrong.
Clearly I am happy to provide more information if necessary.

Many thanks in advance

Atom2

Attachment: dmesg.xl
Description: Text document

Attachment: dmesg.xl.pvh
Description: Text document

Attachment: xl.domU
Description: Text document

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