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Date:      Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:29:52 -0500
From:      "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton@gmail.com>
To:        "Kip Macy" <kip.macy@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz>, Ivan Voras <ivoras@fer.hr>
Subject:   Re: Xen Dom0, are we making progress?
Message-ID:  <ef10de9a0703231929qb7f3d9dod7f1d35712c32f82@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <b1fa29170703131735n687f67fcs58bc52a4a4eb99ab@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <ef10de9a0703121216k1035481bwc7df222a92b44400@mail.gmail.com> <ef10de9a0703121237q3de9f79o76a4358905357f10@mail.gmail.com> <et4aql$p7j$1@sea.gmane.org> <b1fa29170703121300v409bb3c8x457f2f329184d0e5@mail.gmail.com> <45F6E572.3070706@quip.cz> <b1fa29170703131735n687f67fcs58bc52a4a4eb99ab@mail.gmail.com>

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On 3/13/07, Kip Macy <kip.macy@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I know you were working on Xen support in FreeBSD, but web about it
> > (http://www.fsmware.com/xenofreebsd/7.0/STATUS) has one year old info
> > (support planned in FreeBSD 6.1). So is there any progress, or Xen will
> > not be in any near future release?
>
> Basically Xen did not mature in the fashion that I anticipated. As far
> as I can tell it is really only good for server consolidation for
> large Linux distro vendors. You need to have what amounts to a private
> branch. The xen developers don't appear to understand the importance
> of interface versioning. They broke ABI compatibility going from 3.0.2
> -> 3.0.3 (trivial to fix, but that is not the point). When last I
> worked on it, they had one branch that was in constant flux and
> another branch that only received minor bug fixes and was 18 months
> behind from a functionality standpoint (think 5.x / 4.x). There are
> numerous other logging / supportability issues that I think are only
> addressed by the major distros. As it stood 6 months ago, unless you
> understood the internals of various bits of the code, there was no way
> of diagnosing failures due to a misconfiguration.
>
> This is not to say that it isn't cool technology, but rather that
> isn't going to be useful for the things I wanted to use it for so my
> time is being directed elsewhere. If I ever have a need for EC2 I may
> look at it again.
>
> One of the guys who ported FreeBSD to the xbox has expressed interest
> - so something may yet come of it.
>
> I'm happy to provide technical support to an individual who is largely
> self-sustaining in working on the code.
>

What about implementing something like DragonFly BSD virtual kernels?
Matthew Dillon talks about it in is bsdtalk interview:
http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk098.mp3

I suppose it's sorta like linux compat / windows on windows /
coLinux... Towards the end of the interview he talk about it being
extremely easy to implement:
1. signal mailboxes.
2. memory map / virtual page table support.
3. vm space management.



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