From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 9 11:02:31 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D7EED106564A for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 11:02:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nox@jelal.kn-bremen.de) Received: from smtp.kn-bremen.de (gelbbaer.kn-bremen.de [78.46.108.116]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66D448FC14 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 11:02:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: by smtp.kn-bremen.de (Postfix, from userid 10) id 5CE2D1E000DF; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 12:02:30 +0100 (CET) Received: from triton8.kn-bremen.de (noident@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by triton8.kn-bremen.de (8.14.4/8.14.3) with ESMTP id p09B0MEU011006; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 12:00:22 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from nox@triton8.kn-bremen.de) Received: (from nox@localhost) by triton8.kn-bremen.de (8.14.4/8.14.3/Submit) id p09B0MmG011005; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 12:00:22 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from nox) From: Juergen Lock Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2011 12:00:22 +0100 To: Brandon Gooch Message-ID: <20110109110022.GA10789@triton8.kn-bremen.de> References: <20100418191752.GA72730@triton8.kn-bremen.de> <20110107194516.GA28544@triton8.kn-bremen.de> <20110107213643.GA32645@triton8.kn-bremen.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Cc: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org, Xiaodong Yi , Juergen Lock Subject: Re: Testing Luvalley with FreeBSD as dom0 X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 11:02:32 -0000 On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 12:33:59AM -0600, Brandon Gooch wrote: > On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Xiaodong Yi wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I confirm that I no longer have time for Luvalley. However, I will be > > extreemly happy if anybody is willing to take over from me. > > Especially, I quite agree to customize Luvalley for FreeBSD, through > > it supports all kinds of Dom0 OSes. Howerver, I hope that the LIGHT > > architecture of Luvalley could be kept. Maybe it is useful to patch > > dom0 FreeBSD kernel (especially for interrupt handling), but it should > > not be very complex. Part of the code comes from KVM, and I suggest to > > keep flying with KVM to make sure that guest VMs work well. > > I believe that if serious effort were to be put forward by the FreeBSD > developers to further develop the code, the result would need to be > GPL and Linux free (or VERY close to it). This is an area of > contention within the FreeBSD developer and user community, so it > would need to be addressed. As the developer of Luvalley, do you have > the ability to re-license the code using a BSD license? > > Are there too many technical issues with the code to do this? Juergen > mentioned that bits of the code are based on (or pulled directly > from?) Linux KVM. That probably wouldn't fly here... > > > Luvalley does boot and run on bare hardware.  But it does not taint > > dom0 FreeBSD. Although the `non-root' mode dom0 FreeBSD kernel has > > direct access to BIOS and hardware, Luvalley tries hard to coordinate > > with it. For example, Luvalley traps the BIOS calls from the FreeBSD > > kernel to report the modified E820 table. Another example is that > > Luvalley uses NMI as the IPI interrupt to avoid conflict with BSD > > kernel. And I also believe that simple patches could work if some > > corners of FreeBSD kernel are tainted. > > > > Regards, and looking forward to the following news ... > > > > Xiaodong > > As am I... > > Thanks for chiming in Xiaodong! Actually with `tainting' the FreeBSD kernel I meant causing it to be affected by the gpl and its requirements. So if someone were to ship e.g. an appliance that uses Luvalley and a modified FreeBSD kernel he would only have to provide sourcecode of Luvalley and the userland Luvalley version of qemu-kvm, not of his FreeBSD kernel modifications, or of other (non-gpl) userland apps for that matter. But again, IANAL. :) Cheers, Juergen (also hoping Luvalley will have a future...)