[Xen-devel] Xen dom0 Kernel Patches

[Andrew Lyon <andrew.lyon@xxxxxxxxx>]

The recent discussions about pv_ops dom0 has left me in some doubt
about using Xen in a production environment, while various distros
forward port the Xen patches only openSUSE does so for very recent
kernels like 2.6.29, I regularly grab the kernel source rpm from them,
rebase the patches to apply to vanilla, and release a Gentoo ebuild
which quite a few people have used successfully, but I doubt I am
alone in wanting a official dom0 kernel that is not years old.

My question is this, given that the openSUSE patches seem to work
quite well would it really be so much work to at least update the
Xensource kernel to 2.6.29 or .30? I believe openSUSE use a semi
automated process for forward porting but however they do it the
results are quite good, couldn't the Xen developers work with the
distro maintainers to keep the patches up to date? I understand that
each distro has its own set of additional kernel patches but if the
work was done on Vanilla then they could all apply the Xen patches
first and adjust their other patches as necessary.

It seems to me that a huge amount of effort is being duplicated in the
forward porting when a combined effort is bound to produce better
results, if multiple distro's can find the resources to do it surely
working together with Xensource would be less effort for everybody.

The openSUSE patches I have used are from the bleeding edge kernel
builds and 2.6.29 is no longer available, but my current patchset
applies to Vanilla 2.6.29 and can be downloaded from
http://gentoo-xen-kernel.googlecode.com/files/xen-patches-2.6.29-6.tar.bz2,
the Xensource maintainers could grab that as a starting point and help
to fix any bugs that remain.

I understand that the kernel is a moving target and 2.6.29 will soon
be out of date, but I don't think that justifies simply not providing
a newer one because pv_ops will be in mainline "any time soon", it
really feel that it is going to take a long time before that happens,
if at all.

Andy

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel