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xen-users
Re: [Xen-users] domU kernel
Steve Wray wrote:
Christian Horn wrote:
On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 12:14:02AM -0400, IDAGroup - R.W.Muller wrote:
Hi, I found lots of threads where people talk about domU kernel
sitting in /boot of dom0.
The only kernel I can see there is the one the machine and dom0
booted from (vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.el5xen)
Two places are common:
- domU-kernel placed on dom0-filesystem directly, 'kernel' option in
xen-
config for the domU is used then. Only possible for paravirt-domU.
pros: - kernel is directly reachable from dom0
cons: - domU depends on files outside of its disc-image, so you
have to keep an eye of what domU uses what kernel-file
- on upgrading the domU-kernel is a bit more complicated, keep
kernel, maybe existing initrd and modules-directory in sync
- domU-kernel placed inside the domU-diskimage. Works for both HVM and
paravirt-domU. One sees mostly this nowadays. Kernel is located/booted
by pygrub (or a script mounting the partition, making a copy of the
kernel inside to dom0, and starting it then)
pros: - easy updating, i.e. just 'yum update' from the domU updates
the
kernel, initrd, modules and kernel is booted on next domU-boot
You forgot the con.
cons: Security. You now have a domU in which a local exploit could
result in code being executed in dom0 at the next boot of that domU.
By the way, this actually happened. See CVE-2007-4993
IMHO putting the kernel in domU and using pygrub was always asking for
trouble.
In my opinion it is completely crazy to expose dom0 to potential
exploits from domU.
So far as I am aware this is the *only* way to so expose dom0 to domU
security holes and I am deeply shocked if it is true that "One sees
mostly this nowadays"
There's a big advantage to pygrub: kernel update procedures for DomU
have nothing to do with Dom0's kernel. This prevents version and feature
conflicts with package management sytems, and allows updates and reboots
of DomU without having to write to Dom0. This was particularly
troublesome with the Xensource kernels for RHEL 4 and RHEL 5, which had
such different versions for kernel-xen on the server and kernel-xenU on
the guest that it made RHEL whine quite hard about the Dom0 getting such
an old kernel installed on it. And if you tried to use kernel-xen on the
DomU, it created conflicts because the RHEL 4 kernel and RHEL 5 kernels
had the same names and file names, and it could screw up which kernel
you wound up with.
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