From owner-freebsd-xen@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 16 23:23:24 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C05310656C5 for ; Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:23:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from john.c.prather@gmail.com) Received: from mail-ww0-f50.google.com (mail-ww0-f50.google.com [74.125.82.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F03078FC13 for ; Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:23:23 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wwi17 with SMTP id 17so273217wwi.31 for ; Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:23:23 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:received:in-reply-to :references:date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=wim5PHtfn0r2U70uB6bM+gOalNA1bqSpDXUdG0i2Lps=; b=cjFF/XNZjXCnIHv3dhzbO99xOu+BpebKewnVQtDMXpwJ4LAw8Ff3aPLEDS0oFd4P4y prWSmmf0yhqD++wQnIYjgtMXxyMWUkO0unke4thkE5xzbPZ64cOOH33RYD645996pUuo 0maD0K50sXjDinjQawtuQ/sbbP9hVL22Dxo3s= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=BVlGYaEDD45DBNLaRfVdIiVpJroBR5ezkUpoXryAmaA4WB+dxwCknVYua+bmT7Xt+b IOuepVZn0Wdpst6lFno8FH6d8bqVIuBs8rx24oSB7peLzqSWrFvuqMeIHz5myZqjgInS LIigatH++gS1D4J9+kPgBN4XCXJJ67I/z8c9E= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.4.19 with SMTP id 19mr3313929wei.110.1284678002094; Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:00:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.56.81 with HTTP; Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:00:02 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:00:02 -0700 Message-ID: From: John Prather To: Zladivliba Voskuy Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD on EC2 maybe real now ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 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, 16 Sep 2010 23:23:24 -0000 I'm not familiar with EC2 myself yet, but I did play with FreeBSD booted out of pvgrub on linode's xen system. It was something of a pain, and required their finnix linux setup (some rescue linux system that they offer which did not consume my own paid-for disk volumes) to write the OS disk image to a volume, create the /boot fs and put the kernel into it, etc. (linode uses paravirt which resulted in unstable FreeBSD, so I never did get a Linode FreeBSD system setup that was acceptable) Depending on the ability to run one of their own provided systems on a very tiny portion of available volume space in order to put the FreeBSD pieces into place, it might be similar. I used this as my guide: http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/NetBSD_howto Which I had to make heavy modifications to because FreeBSD !=3D NetBSD (for instance, netbsd apparently compiles under linux) Using my experience applying that info to FreeBSD, I threw together some documentation about all the failures I had getting FreeBSD to be stable on paravirt. http://wiki.interwebfun.org/index.php?title=3DFreeBSD_XEN_Guests I imagine one of the more relevant portions of this page would be "Building XEN Kernels" and "Creating Disk Image". The former shows how I built XEN kernels on my local desktop for this. The latter details how I created the disk image for the OS volume. Apparently I did not detail how I setup the boot fs with the kernel image(s), so refer to the NetBSD_howto page for copying the kernels over and booting them. Keep in mind that these are suggestions for a starting point when trying to setup FreeBSD on a remote system with pvgrub, and almost everything will need to be considered and adjusted for amazon's EC2 environment. I had FreeBSD 7.2 with xen patches happily booting from pvgrub on Linode's xen system, but 7.3, 8.0, 9.0 were all terribly unstable, and most would not even boot in SMP. I'm under the impression that HVM is far more reliable than ParaVirt for FreeBSD, however I don't know what EC2 provides. I will probably play around with this a bit myself in the coming weeks. If i run into some success, I will post an update with more useful information. -john On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 6:47 AM, Zladivliba Voskuy w= rote: > > Hey guys ! > > It seems there's a little hope to make progress with FreeBSD on EC2, as A= mazon posted this announcement : http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/07/use-you= r-own-kernel-with-amazon-ec2.html > > I couldn't read the documentation about how to do this but they say "You = could (if you are sufficiently adept) use this facility to launch an operat= ing system that we don't support directly (e.g. FreeBSD). If you manage to = do this, please feel free to let me know". > > Does anyone knows how to do this actually ? Or is this really possible ? > > I've been waiting for an FreeBSD ec2 image for years now ! I know there's= a lot of persons waiting also around so if anyone knows how to make this h= appen, please post somehting !!!! > > Thanks ! > Z. > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 = =A0 =A0 =A0_______________________________________________ > freebsd-xen@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-xen > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-xen-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >