Re: [Xen-devel] Xen Virtualized OSX

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Yeah, just occurs to me that if OpenGL and hopefully DirectX (though I'm
> less optimistic about it) add some kind of hardware specification for
> virtualization support, then this problem could be reduced in complexity a
> reasonable amount.

Various people have done work on supporting virtualisation of OpenGL already.  
Search for VMGL for instance.

I know of some people who have hopes for virtualising both OpenGL and DirectX 
on Xen but their work is in the planning stages only and I don't know if 
it'll be feasible to achieve all their goals and support 3D too.

> Apple MAY not be that helpful in virtualizing OSX even on their hardware,
> but I'd bet the osx86 team(s) would be insanely helpful.

That's true.  ISTR Apple talking about MacOS virtual machines at some point 
but I don't know what their stance is.  I'd have thought they they'll have to 
support it eventually, on their own hardware at least.

> At any rate - this is all guess work on my part. Who knows for certain.

Indeed.  Time will reveal all to us, I suspect.

Cheers,
Mark

> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Mark Williamson <
>
> mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Indeed, that'd make sense...
> > >
> > > Well, I'd imagine that if one could pass ctrl of a video card to a DomU
> > > machine, then that could open up a lot of fun possiblities not just for
> > > OSX.
> >
> > Indeed, we live in interesting times.  Even more awesome would be to be
> > able
> > to pass multiple video cards to different guests but I believe this is
> > not currently supported.
> >
> > > The way I'd control the rid is get a VNC server running on the Dom0
> > > machine and then remotely just control things through that - heck, it'd
> >
> > be
> >
> > > especially fun as one could use VNC's webserver to control things. :)
> >
> > Would be cool, yes.  I assume the current solution assumes that the user
> > somehow net-logins to dom0.  I've not looked at it, just saw the
> > changeset comments.
> >
> > > I wonder exactly what else stands in the way of getting OSX to see a
> > > the native apple hardware from the DomU perspective? I'd imagine if
> > > there was EFI support for DomUs as well as control of whatever hardware
> > > addresses that must be contacted to verify the machine is "genuine" -
> > > then the DomU should be happy with unhacked osx. Though the osx86
> > > project really has
> >
> > come
> >
> > > a very long way.
> >
> > Quite possibly true.  EFI support isn't available for domU as far as I
> > know. I
> > expect it will be, one day.  Beyond that I don't know how much of the
> > hardware provided by default is supported by OS X out of the box.
> >
> > There are obvious licensing issues and I doubt Apple would be
> > particularly helpful support-wise about OS X running in a Xen VM, even on
> > an Apple branded
> > box.
> >
> > Back in the old days, before x86 support in OS X, there was talk of
> > porting the Darwin kernel to run as a Xen PV guest.  The PPC Xen project
> > is, as far as I know, dead now and PPC Macs are fading into the past :-( 
> > Possibly you could port Darwin x86 to run as a PV guest but I don't know
> > who'd have the motivation to do that these days.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Mark
> >
> > > Anyway, I'd work on it if I had the time, but no dice for now.
> > >
> > > Cheers friends.
> > >
> > > On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Mark Williamson <
> > >
> > > mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > Howdy gang - any idea if I could use Xen on my Mac Pro to run
> > > > > Windows in parallel to OSX and use both such that graphics apps
> > > > > have access
> >
> > to
> >
> > > > > the actual graphics hardware?
> > > >
> > > > Uhhh, the answer is probably "Mostly no" ;-)
> > > >
> > > > I've recently seen some support committed to Xen to allow you to pass
> > > > a graphics adaptor to a domU, which is a step in the right direction
> > > > for what you're trying to achieve.  I don't believe it has support
> > > > for run time switching which domain has access to the graphics card,
> > > > though, which you would also seem to require.
> > > >
> > > > Also, MacOS X isn't going to boot under Xen without some hacking, I
> > > > think, since Xen's HVM mode emulates a conventional PC without EFI,
> >
> > etc.
> >
> > > > You could
> > > > possibly make a hacked version of OS X work.  I think somebody might
> >
> > have
> >
> > > > got
> > > > OS X running in a Xen domain but I imagine the graphical performance
> > > > of the virtualised framebuffer would detract from the "Mac
> > > > experience" somewhat
> > > >
> > > > :-(
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (
> > > > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emaw48
> > > >/pmpu/>
> >
> > <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emaw48/pmp
> >
> > > >u/> )
> >
> > --
> > Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (
> > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emaw48/pmp
> >u/> )



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