A few Xen questions

Paul Iadonisi pri.rhl3 at iadonisi.to
Thu Dec 2 17:11:47 UTC 2004


 First, it think it's fantastic that the Fedora Project is considering
bundling a Xen enabled kernel.  I know it's only in development now and
likely not etched in stone yet, but nevertheless ... cool.
  But I have a few questions, some of which I have educated guess about
the answers.  I post them mostly here for discussion, as I suspect that
some things are undecided or unexplored.

1. Uh ... so where are the Xen control tools?  I suspect these are
   forthcoming, I just wanted to double check.
2. On a somewhat related note, Red Hat at one time bundled a UML kernel
   but later stopped (even in an errata kernel for that same release).
   What were the reasons for this?
3. I know some basic differences between UML and Xen, but I'm wondering
   about the differences in mindshare.  How much 'industry' buy-in does
   each have?  I note that Xen has some support of both HP Labs and Intel
   Research Cambridge.
4. Any idea if it will show up in a future version of RHEL as well?
5. On the technical side ... are the changes to the domain0 kernel
   running on the raw hardware non-intrusive enough that it may one
   day become feasible and/or desirable to just ship the standard
   kernel as a Xen-enabled kernel?
6. What is the likelihood that Xen will be included in Linus' kernel
   someday?  Has anyone solicited Linus' opinion on Xen?  I'm curious
   because that would mean *two* virtualization technologies that could
   potentially interfere with one another, or at least be mutually
   exclusive at build time.  Not that it would matter much from a practical
   end-user perspective ... if you really want to run a bunch of Xen
   domains within a UML ... I suppose there are worse ways to torture
   yourself ;-).
7. What do people think of the idea of porting Anaconda to run under Xen so
   that you can install a full release of Fedora Core (or RHEL) as an
   unprivileged guest the way you would normally install the OS?  I'm not
   exactly volunteering, but I did *almost* have the installer booting within
   UML and start to install Red Hat Linux.  It bombed out at some point.  Can't
   remember where.  I did it all without hacking any python, IIRC.
-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets




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