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Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:18:19 -0500
From: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>
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To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
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Cc: Pieter de Goeje <pieter@degoeje.nl>, Lev Serebryakov <lev@freebsd.org>,
	freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve
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On 08/19/11 13:49, Robert Watson wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Aug 2011, Gary Palmer wrote:
>
>> I think we need to refocus on what would give the most benefit. At least
>> as far as I can see:
>>
>> - port/package management: most users would benefit
>
> Definitely -- and there's active work going on here that is very
> exciting indeed.
>
>> - improved virtualisation support: a lot of users would benefit
>
> This is an area of very active work as well, although I'd like to see
> more going on. In particular, I'd like to see (a) significantly more
> mature Xen HVM PV driver support -- and the ability to load them on a
> GENERIC kernel so we don't break freebsd-update kernel updates by
> requiring custom kernels, and (b) bHyve to be fleshed out, including
> support for suspend/resume and migration. Cambridge may be able to help
> with non-i386/amd64 virtualisation; I have a local TODO item relating to
> MIPS virtualisation, for example.

On this subject, we've had a lot of luck doing a 
potentially-paravirtualized GENERIC on powerpc, where you can boot the 
same GENERIC kernel on real hardware, on IBM's POWER hypervisor (in a 
project branch) and under Sony's Cell hypervisor on the PS3. Perhaps 
some of the infrastructure for that can be reused on x86.
-Nathan