[Xen-users] pcifront (CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND=m) support in RHEL 4.5 x86 Dom U

["Teo En Ming" <space.time.universe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

The production server supports Intel Virtualization Technology. Processor is an Intel Xeon 1.86 GHz Quad Core. 8 GB DDR2 memory.

There is also an Emulex LightPulse Fiber Channel HBA adapter.

The host operating system (Dom 0) is RHEL 5 x86 with Xen Virtualization technology. Dom 0 kernel is 2.6.18-8.el5xen. I have recompiled the Dom 0 kernel so that pciback (CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_BACKEND=y) is compiled statically into the kernel. Upon parsing the 
pciback.hide parameter on the Dom 0 kernel command line, I am able to hide a port of the fiber channel HBA card from Dom 0.

Now, I have a RHEL 4 Update 5 x86 running as a para-virtualized guest. The Dom U kernel is 
kernel-xenU-2.6.9-55.el4. I intend to allow the PV guest to have direct access to a port on the HBA card. However, there are no PCIFRONT and LPFC kernel modules in the xenU kernel. Only BLKFRONT and NETFRONT are supported by default. LPFC is a kernel module for the Emulex HBA card. To compile these two kernel modules, I downloaded and installed 
kernel-2.6.9-55.el5.src.rpm, which is the full kernel sources (with xen patches) for RHEL 4.5. However, compiling pcifront and lpfc against the kernel sources did not succeed. CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND=m and CONFIG_SCSI_LPFC=m. These kernel modules do not have any dependencies. It appears that CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND is not supported in the 
2.6.9-55 kernel source code for RHEL 4.5. 

Due to production requirements, I have to stick to RHEL 4.5 as a guest. The alternative is to use the 2.6.18-8 xen kernel that shipped with RHEL 5 to boot the RHEL 4.5 guest. To do this, however, I have to upgrade the glibc, udev, initscripts, and other core packages in RHEL 
4.5 guest. This makes the RHEL 4.5 effectively NOT a RHEL 4.5 anymore. I have to stick to production requirements as Symantec ESM, SCSP, Antivirus, and siteminder agent may not work with a newer GLIBC and kernel. Have an incompatible GLIBC may cause segmentation faults with certain softwares.

Please advise me on what I should do.

Thank you very much.
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