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[Xen-devel] Re: A proposal - binary

To: David Lang <dlang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Xen-devel] Re: A proposal - binary
From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:11:31 -0700
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxx>, zach@xxxxxxxxxx, xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, jlo@xxxxxxxxxx, greg@xxxxxxxxx, Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Antonio Vargas <windenntw@xxxxxxxxx>, linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, ian.pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, torvalds@xxxxxxxx, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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David Lang wrote:
so if I understand this correctly we are saying that a kernel compiled to run on hypervisor A would need to be recompiled to run on hypervisor B, and recompiled again to run on hypervisor C, etc

where A could be bare hardware, B could be Xen 2, C could be Xen 3, D could be vmware, E could be vanilla Linux, etc.

Yes, but you can compile one kernel for any set of hypervisors, so if you want both Xen and VMI, then compile both in. (You always get bare hardware support.)

this sounds like something that the distros would not support, they would pick their one hypervisor to support and leave out the others. the big problem with this is that the preferred hypervisor will change over time and people will be left with incompatable choices (or having to compile their own kernels, including having to recompile older kernels to support newer hypervisors)

Why? That's like saying that distros will only bother to compile in one scsi driver.

The hypervisor driver is tricker than a normal kernel device driver, because in general it needs to be present from very early in boot, which precludes it from being a normal module. There's hope that we'll be able to support hypervisor drivers as boot-time grub/multiboot modules, so you'll be able to compile up a new hypervisor driver for a particular kernel and use it without recompiling the whole thing.


   J

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