[Xen-ia64-devel] RFC: Switch to xlilo now? Or post-3.0?

["Magenheimer, Dan (HP Labs Fort Collins)" <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxx>]

There has been various threads about attempts to boot
Xen under RHEL4.  Because RHEL4 requires an initrd, a
special version of elilo.efi is required.  This version
called "xlilo" was included in the Xen/ia64 tree some
time ago, along with a patch file (xen4elilo.patch)
that is required to apply to Xen/ia64 for xlilo to work
properly.

I have not applied this patch to the mainstream tree
because, once this patch is applied to Xen/ia64:

1) everyone will need to start booting xen with xlilo.efi
   instead of elilo.efi.  xlilo.efi is backwards compatible
   and the changes have been given to the elilo maintainer
   so they will eventually get into the official elilo
   release
2) everyone will need to change their elilo.conf file.
   In existing elilo.conf files, image=xen and initrd=xenlinux.
   In the new format, vmm=xen, image=xenlinux and initrd=initrd.
   Elilo.conf files that contain vmm= will cause current
   elilo.efi to fail even if just booting linux as elilo
   parses the entire file.

Because of these changes, if we install the xen4elilo
patch, everyone using Xen/ia64 will need to change their
environment when they pull the changeset with the xen4elilo
patch.  (The Cambridge Xen team calls this a "flag day".)

Should we do this now, before 3.0 goes out?  Or wait
and do it post-3.0?  Comments please...

Thanks,
Dan

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