From owner-freebsd-xen@freebsd.org Thu Jul 19 12:03:21 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-xen@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 98BBC103156E for ; Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:03:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from SRS0=esCJ=KD=quip.cz=000.fbsd@elsa.codelab.cz) Received: from elsa.codelab.cz (elsa.codelab.cz [94.124.105.4]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 310668D93E; Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:03:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from SRS0=esCJ=KD=quip.cz=000.fbsd@elsa.codelab.cz) Received: from elsa.codelab.cz (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E63A28469; Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:03:13 +0200 (CEST) Received: from illbsd.quip.test (ip-86-49-16-209.net.upcbroadband.cz [86.49.16.209]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 0D99928468; Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:03:01 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Re: HEADS UP: merged PVHv2 support and future plans To: =?UTF-8?Q?Roger_Pau_Monn=c3=a9?= , freebsd-xen@freebsd.org References: <20180719090444.jojyziar2c6wy735@mac> From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> Message-ID: Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:03:00 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20180719090444.jojyziar2c6wy735@mac> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.27 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion of the freebsd port to xen - implementation and usage List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:03:21 -0000 Roger Pau Monné wrote on 2018/07/19 11:04: > Hello, > > Today I've merged PVHv2 support into FreeBSD, allowing FreeBSD to be > used as a PVHv2 DomU and Dom0. While it's not a huge set of changes, > I would *really* appreciate if people could test the code starting > from r336474 (or any later changeset). > > I expect there's going to be some confusion with PVHv1 vs PVHv2, so I > will try to clarify this now. PVHv1 was introduced ~4 years ago, and > at the time it seemed like a good way to move forward, allowing Xen to > rely more on hardware virtualization. Later on, we sadly discovered > that PVHv1 was still too similar to classic PV, and didn't allow Xen > to make use of all the possible hardware virtualization extensions, so > PVHv2 was introduced ~2 years ago as a replacement for PVHv1. PVHv2 > ABI however is not compatible with PVHv1, which means that different > entry points and interfaces must be used to interact with the > hypervisor. > > After introducing PVHv2 PVHv1 was deprecated and PVHv1 has been > removed from the hypervisor in recent versions, that's why the Xen > ports package is still stuck with Xen 4.7, because later versions > removed PVHv1 support. With the addition of PVHv2 to FreeBSD the port > can be updated to newer Xen versions and we can move forward. > > There will be issues however, as newer versions of Xen won't have > support for PVHv1. My plan is the following in order to try to make > this less painful for users: > > - Wait until FreeBSD 12 is released, which will contain PVHv1 and > PVHv2 support. > - Once FreeBSD 12 has been released, update the Xen port to the > latest version. What about creating new port as xen410 (for version 4.10) or repocopy of the old one to xen47 to allow coexist of two different versions in the ports tree and allow user to choose the right one for their OS version? > - Send an email to freebsd-xen notifying users of the bump in the > package. > - Users running FreeBSD < 12 must stick with the old Xen 4.7 > package. > - Users running FreeBSD >= 12 must use the new Xen package. [...] Miroslav Lachman