Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 10:47:10 +0000 From: Dr Josef Karthauser <josef.karthauser@unitedlane.com> To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Subject: Xen, and "ops_pv" boot loader? Message-ID: <F4158AD6-D194-4BF6-B92E-1A121805EA22@unitedlane.com>
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Hello everyone, I'm beginning to play with Freebsd and Xen, and I'm targeting a VPS = provider who is giving me a large memory instance for a good price. = However, he only supports "ops_pv" kernels, being primarily a linux = house. So, I'm trying to work out what the best approach is. Ideally I'd be = running amd64, but he doesn't want to run an hvmloader. I guess that = means that I need to be running an i386 kernel; hopefully PAE works so = that I take advantage of the memory. However, this appears to be an inflexible solution. Doesn't it mean that = I will have no ability to tweak kernel variables, because effectively = once it's setup he will control the boot process - I'll also not be able = to upgrade the kernel easily. Also, no access to single user mode... = Ideally I want a boot loader.... So, I was thinking. How do we make the boot loader appear to Xen to be a = paravirtualized kernel? Currently it isn't even an elf object, but what = it is was. How much work do you think that it might be to make a "loader = kernel" that appears to be a kernel, but in fact is a boot strap. The = idea being that it could be run as a "ops_pv" kernel on a Xen platform = but otherwise behave exactly like our boot loader, processing = loader.conf, and booting a kernel in the normal way. Does anyone have any idea of whether that's a possibility? Or, is there = something fundamental about the pv_ops model that would prevent this? If this were possible we could boot the amd64 XENHVM kernel in a pv_ops = manner, with full control of the kernel configuration. Hmm... Joe
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