> From: M.A. Williamson [mailto:maw48@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark
> Williamson Sent: dinsdag 27 november 2007 23:42
> To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: Henning Sprang; Nyers, Gabor; Emre Erenoglu
> Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Running OS instances within domU or on physical
> device
>
> I'm cc-ing Emre because he's trying to run domUs on baremetal too and some
> of this will be relevant to him.
>
> I think this ought to work, so I'm glad that it worked for you ;-)
>
> The only problem with this sort of thing is where device names etc change
> (e.g. some newer XenLinux kernels use hvc0 for the console, others use xvc0
> for the console, older ones may use ttyS0 - makes it difficult to configure
> for). However, given modern distros identify filesystems by their label
> rather than their device, the devsice naming should be less of a problem.
> You'll probably need to specify different commandline options to the kernel
> depending on whether it's a native one or not (e.g. different console=
> value, any Xen-specific or native-specific options).
>
> [G.Nyers> ] That's exactly what happened in my case. Filesystems were
> referenced by labels, and xvc0 was already added in /etc/inittab and
> /etc/securetty. So after booting on physical hw, I was immediately able to
> log in through ssh. (I haven't tried the console, but /etc/inittab contains
> getty entries for tty devices, so that shouldn't be a problem)
Cool.
Maybe we should make a howto on the wiki with details of what needs to be
setup to make this work.
> You also need to add the Xen console device to /etc/securetty(s) and the
> native serial console device also, if you use one.
>
> The main gripe with dual booting between native and Xenified is possibly
> going to be that the hardware detection routines of your distros will get
> confused by (virtual or real) hardware coming and going depending on how
> you booted.
>
> [G.Nyers> ] Well, I'm not sure "confused" is the right expression, the HW
> detection went fine, and the OS configured the HW to its best abilities.
> However, because of the OS can't possible know it is used in this peculiar
> way, there will be some unintended side effects, depending on e.g. distro
> etc...: - Network devices: some distros (eg. SLES or OpenSuSE) like to
> configure network devices based on MAC address. That configuration will not
> be transparent when booting on physical hw or domU. Nothing a little udev
> tweaking couldn't solve though... Btw. in case of RHEL it worked by chance.
> - Multipathing: As I mentioned, filesystems have worked, but when the OS
> was booted on physical machine, all filesystems on the SAN LUN were
> accessed through a single path.
OK. I was concerned what the OS would do when seeing devices appear and
disappear regularly due to virtual / physical switching: I'd expect this
would be a problem primarily due to annoying boot screens saying your
hardware is different and due to the risk of losing configuration details.
> I'm not quite sure how they handle this, or how much of a problem it'd be
> in practice. This is also likely to be an issue for HVM/PV dual booting.
>
> Unfortunately, different niggles are also likely to come up depending on
> which XenLinux you use. :-( [G.Nyers> ] Can you give some specific
> examples?
First thing that occurs to me: depending on which XenLinux you use the virtual
serial console can have different names. On old XenLinux it may default to
tty1 (or ttyS0 if you set a commandline switch). On newer XenLinux I think
it's xvc0. On mainline kernel.org Linux with Xen support compiled in it is
instead hvc0.
Which XenLinux kernel you use could obviously also effect what virtual devices
are available and get Kudzu (or your favourite hardware detector) all
agitated.
Adding HVM into the mix, there's a whole other load of different devices that
could appear or disappear depending on if you boot native or under HVM.
Again I'm not sure how Linux distros will react to this. I seem to recall
once booting a native Windows install under VMware and it spent about half an
hour redetecting all the changed hardware ;-) Modern Linux distros - and
modern Windows releases, come to that - may cope with this better for all I
know. I'd suspect it'd still upset windows though - just a hunch ;-)
Another thing I'd be quite interested to get working is dual booting the same
guest under PV and HVM. I myself would use this functionality for testing
stuff out. I expect it'd work already, but it'd be nice to make it user
friendly as possible. I've been considering what pygrub changes could make
this easier.
Cheers,
Mark
--
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat? And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!
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