Virtualization
In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization features.
Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley
Enterprise Management Tools List
This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list
Fedora Xen List
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.
kernel-xen is dead
Mark McLoughlin wrote[1] to say the kernel-xen package is dead. Which is to say kernel can now support x86 and x86_64 domU guests and kernel-xen will be dropped from Rawhide.
Hiding between those lines is the fact that there is currently no Dom0 kernel in F9 or Rawhide. Without which a domU must be booted via a paravirt_ops kernel or with KVM-based xenner.
The conversation then turned to the matter of migrating away from Xen and support for systems without hardware virtualization.
So, Paul Wouters asked[2] if there was a howto for migration to KVM. It seemed there is not.
Alain Williams realized that Fedora 9 has no Dom0 support after installing it. When he asked why Mark McLoughlin pointed[3] out the problems with kernel-xen being based on a much older kernel than kernel creating a time sink, so the decision was made to rebase to the upstream kernel which supports paravirt_ops. This decision was first announced[4] back in Nov 2007 by Daniel P. Berrange.
Mark McLoughlin also stated[3] that Dom0 support at F10 launch looks unlikely. Fortunately we have a more positive news on that front below.
Dale Bewley bemoaned[5] the fact that he has no budget to upgrade to HVM capable hardware and will have to stick on F8 until F10 has Dom0 support.
Stephen Smoogen pointed[6] out that RHEL5 and CentOS5 are options for Dom0 on non-HVM hardware. Daniel Berrange expressed[7] some empathy and the desire for such support, but reitterated it isn't viable until Dom0 is ported to pv_ops.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00044.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00046.html
[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00048.html
[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-November/msg00106.html
[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00049.html
[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00052.html
[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00053.html
State of Xen in upstream Linux
Pasi Kärkkäinen thoughtfully forwarded[1] a long detailed xen kernel status message which was sent to the xen-devel list by Jeremy Fitzhardinge. Jeremy pointed out that mainline kernel is at 2.6.27-rc1 and his current patch stack is pretty much empty after being merged into linux-2.6.git.
Jeremy reitterated the fact that Fedora 9's kernel-xen package was based on the mainline kernel even though it is a separate package, and now that kernel-xen has been dropped from rawhide Fedora 10 will have only one kernel package. Jeremy said his focus in the next kernel development window will be dom0 support with the hope it will be merged into 2.6.28.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-July/msg00058.html
Libvirt List
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
oVirt Devel List
This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.