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Re: [Xen-users] 32-on-64 and PVGRUB

To: Luke S Crawford <lsc@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] 32-on-64 and PVGRUB
From: Miike Lovell <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:15:38 -0600
Cc: xen-users <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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On 3/15/2009 2:39 PM, Luke S Crawford wrote:
so it appears that PVGRUB requires that I specifiy (in my
domain config file) either the -x86_64  or the -x86_32
version.

Does anyone have a clever way I can let my users switch
between x86_64 and i386 without giving them access to
the domain config file?  Preferably, something more secure
than PyGRUB?

I was considering hacking up PyGRUB so that it  only
allows the user a choice of PVGRUB 32 and 64, but that
would make things more complex, and I'm not sure how much
more secure that would be (over just using PyGRUB.)

Other than that, I like PVGRUB-  I can have it boot
to a menu.lst on a read-only partition, so it is impossibe
for a user to mess up the menu.lst to the point they
can't get into the rescue image, then I have it default
to re-calling PVGRUB with the user's menu.lst.
I haven't played much with PVGrub myself. But in doing some research, back in the day, I discovered an entry in the Xen Community Blog that talked about PVGrub. http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/28/xen-33-feature-pv-grub/ . It mentions that there is a limitation where PVGrub can't make a 32/64 switch. So AFAIK, doing that swap inside PVGrub isn't possible. It might have been fixed in unstable somewhere but I don't know about it. So you would need to do something outside of the PV domains, such as a bootloader like PyGrub. But considering the amount of time I have spent on this, I don't know if I would take my word for much. Good Luck.

Mike

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