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xen-users
Re: [Xen-users] Linux Device Drivers modified in Xen ?
> I have spent enough time trying to find out if the native device drivers in
> Linux need to be modified for it to work on Linux or not. I havent been
> able to find a specific answer, so I thought i will post a query on this
> list. So here are a list of some question that I have.
>
> 1. Will native Linux device drivers work when running on Zen VMM?
The source code of native Linux drivers does not need to be modified for use
in dom0 or a driver domain. Occasionally a driver doesn't work because of
bugs / assumptions and these have to be fixed but usually well-written
drivers will Just Work when compiled against the XenLinux kernel and loaded.
You can't load a driver that was compiled against non-Xen Linux, but then you
can't generally load drivers that were compiled against different Linuxes
anyhow, due to the lack of a stable ABI.
> 2. Has XenSource or somebody have written the front end and back end driver
> for every device driver in Linux ? Or is it that only for a limited set of
> devices the front end and back end drivers were developed.
The main front / back drivers available are block (should work with any
physical block device) and net (should work with any physical net device).
There's also a simple, low performance framebuffer front / back driver.
There's some basic support for passing specific USB devices to HVM guests in
the tree. It's also possible to assign whole PCI devices to a PV guest (or
HVM, in the unstable tree). There's a pvSCSI driver in the works (you can
already access SCSI disks, this extends support to other peripherals). These
techniques (do / will / should) allow you to pass devices into a guest that
are not supported by the generic front / back device classes.
> 3. Is there some kind of documentation availabl for writing split device
> drivers?
There's some documentation in the interface manual in the source tree,
probably some on the wiki. The code may also be helpful to read.
The papers here
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/architecture.html) are also
worth reading, especially "Safe Hardware Access with the Xen Virtual Machine
Monitor" for a description of the IO architecture and "Xen and the Art of
Virtualization" for general Xen background.
You can also ask technical questions about implementation on the xen-devel
mailing list. The mailing list archive is possibly worth a look too.
Hope that helps,
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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