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xen-ppc-devel

Re: [XenPPC] mini-os

On Wed, 2006-08-16 at 15:33 -0400, Maria Butrico wrote:
> I have another question related to small, non-linux, os'es that can be 
> used as a model to build a domU for xen/ppc.  I am basically redoing a 
> similar thing, that is a small domU with a stipped down JVM.  I was 
> hoping to start with a working, small os .  Are there any out there that 
> have been ported to Xen/ppc? 

We've tried to make design decisions (such as how to handle virtual
addresses) that enable any OS and don't tie us to Linux. While there are
some other open source OSs for PowerPC, I haven't heard of any work to
port them to Xen.

A new OS (even a tiny one) may need a new loader. The flattened device
tree structure that we're passing to the domain is currently only
understood by Linux. One could either add support for it to the new
port, or maintain the Open Firmware client interface we originally used,
so that any OS that speaks Open Firmware would work. (In that case, the
OF stub should get its device tree from the flattened structure.)

Of course, a tiny OS might not need a device tree at all. A simple
loader could be devised that passes the critical info (such as memory
size) entirely in registers.

-- 
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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