Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC][XM-TEST][PATCH] Change xm-test HVM disk.img to be an iso cdrom image with grub and an initramfs

[Harry Butterworth <harry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 12:27 +0100, Harry Butterworth wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 15:21 +0100, Harry Butterworth wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 18:07 +0100, Harry Butterworth wrote:
> > > I have had a certain amount of pain trying to get the HVM xm-tests to
> > > run on my ubuntu box.  The main problem was xm-test's reuse of the
> > > ubuntu kernel from /boot which doesn't have the ide driver or the ext2
> > > filesystem compiled in by default.  The lack of these drivers means that
> > > the xm-test HVM image which is an ext2 filesystem on an ide emulated
> > > drive doesn't boot so most of the HVM test suite fails.
> > > 
> > > This patch changes the xm-test build process and the python test library
> > > such that the HVM image is built as an iso cdrom image containing grub
> > > and an initramfs.
> > > 
> > > This seems to be the best way to fix the ubuntu boot problems and will
> > > hopefully be compatible with all the other distros as well.
> > > 
> > > The advantages of this approach are as follows:
> > > 
> > > 1) Using grub eliminates the requirement for lilo for HVM testing.
> > > 2) Creating a grub cdrom image rather than a hard disk image is more
> > > likely to work correctly with all the versions of grub we care about
> > > (some versions of grub have a problem with hard disk geometry
> > > apparently).
> > > 3) Using an initramfs image on the cdrom image should work with all 2.6
> > > kernels that xm-test is likely to encounter.  This is not dependent on
> > > any kernel config options being enabled so can't be compiled out as a
> > > module as was the problem with the ext2 image in the case of ubuntu.
> > > 4) Using an initramfs image with a ramdisk mounted for the root
> > > filesystem makes the HVM domU configuration much closer to the PV domU
> > > configuration which is likely to help us keep the test-cases common
> > > between HVM and PV.
> > > 
> > > On ubuntu, with this patch most of the HVM tests now seem to work though
> > > I am getting some random failures that I think are probably not related
> > > to the patch.
> > > 
> > > The patch must be tested on the other distributions before it can be
> > > applied.
> > 
> > This new version of the patch adds the af_packet module to the list of
> > modules installed on the ramdisk by default.  This gets a few of the
> > network tests working.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Harry Butterworth <butterwo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> This third version of the patch changes the domain configuration for the
> new way of specifying a cdrom introduced in changeset:
> 10921:4c2fab8f8c3420df750af2f3d4dc8cf377f2f418
> 
> Signed-off-by: Harry Butterworth <butterwo@xxxxxxxxxx>

This fourth version of the patch adds an alternate path when looking for
the stage2_eltorito file used to make the iso image bootable.  Older
grub installations put it in a different place.

Thanks to Ricardo C Gonzalez for some testing here.

Signed-off-by: Harry Butterworth <butterwo@xxxxxxxxxx>

Attachment: xm-test-hvm-iso-grub-initramfs.patch
Description: Text Data

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