Re: [Xen-devel] Windows XP patches

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> This is my first post to this group. I am confused by what I have read in
> an early version of the FAQ and the current version. The first version said
> that there was a licensing issue and the second version claims that Windows
> does not lend itself to the paravirtualization techniques that Xen uses.
> Has Xen changed that much?

The patches can't be released due to licensing issues - only signees of the MS 
academic source license were allowed to see them.  Also, the XP port is 
unmaintained and won't work on Xen 2.x or higher.  The Windows source also 
didn't lend itself well to modification, due to the large number of 
arch-dependent lines of code throughout the source base.

> The reason I would like to know is that I do not 
> want to have to buy a new system in order to take be able to run Windows XP
> and Linux or Darwin/Mac OSX together

Ported XP is never likely to see the light of day.  I'm afraid for XP it's a 
choice of QEmu, or buying new hardware :-(

> (yes I have begun to read the 
> documentation so that I can port Darwin to Xen).

That'd be neat!  Mac OS X on PPC can boot on a vanilla Darwin kernel - lets 
hope that it can also do so on x86 (i.e. without some weirdo DRM scheme 
breaking it).

> If the problem is the 
> licensing, would that still apply if I am a registered legal owner of an
> existing copy of Windows XP and could just patch a few dll's?

There was some talk of a binary patching scheme but nobody really wanted to 
figure out if it was legal - it seems safe to bet MS wouldn't be too happy 
about it.

Really the only way to run Win XP is to have virtualisation-enhanced hardware.  
XP on Xen-unstable / VT works already (needs robustifying and optimising).  
The public can't quite buy the kit yet, though.

Cheers,
Mark

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