WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-users

Re: [Xen-users] xen in in the stock linux kernel...

> > You can grab it from Linus' git tree, or you can probably download a
> > snapshot of that tree.  Remember that you need to set your architecture
> > to be PPro or newer, otherwise the Xen option won't show up - that
> > confused me for some time a couple of days ago ;-)
>
> Finally got around to trying this... but it looks like the kernel config
> options for XEN (and PARAVIRT) only exist in the arch/i386 tree :( ...
> I've been trying to use x86_64 for the year or more, but it sure seems to
> be an uphill path :(

Yep, the mainline support is x86_64 only for the moment (though it ought to 
run in 32-bit PAE compatibility mode on an x64 Xen host).

The XenLinux in the XenSource repositority is currently a separate codebase 
from the mainline Linux Xen support (although code flows between the two) and 
it does have support for x86_64, which I assume you've tried?

> So, I've found one small machine of mine that is an i386 build, but I
> can't seem to get the new kernel packaged up correctly... or maybe this
> only works with newer hypervisors? None of the boxes I currently have
> access to are running anything more current than 3.0.4
>
> ERROR: Kernel image does not have a a.out9 header.
> ERROR: Unrecognized image format
> ERROR: Error constructing guest OS
>
> and after monkeying around:
>
> ERROR: Not a Xen-ELF image: '__xen_guest' section not found.
> ERROR: Error constructing guest OS
>
> I poked around on the wiki and in google, but I can't find
> anything about getting a stock linux kernel to run... It seems
> you want to copy the vmlinux file out of the top of the kernel
> source tree, strip it, and gzip it ... that APPEARS to get the
> right format of file that the xen tools will try to load... but
> at that point I'm hosed... with the xen_guest message.

Yeah.  It's not possible to boot bzImage kernels directly under Xen at all; 
that requires an update of the bzImage format, which has to be made without 
breaking buggy bootloaders - so that part of the effort is going slow.

The vmlinux from the source tree should load on its own; stripping it and 
gzipping it to get a small vmlinuz helps keep the size down a lot though!

What Xen were you running this on?  I've had a mainline kernel boot 
successfully on the Xen 3.0.3 shipped with CentOS / RHEL 5.  Are you sure 
that paravirt_ops support *and* the specific Xen support were both compiled 
into the kernel?

Cheers,
Mrak

> I'll try upgrading to a more current version of xen, but did not
> like the 3.1.0 build procedures the last time I tried them ...
>
>
> -Tom
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users



-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>