Re: [Xen-devel] Radical proposal: ship not-fully-tidied shim as 4.10.1

[George Dunlap <dunlapg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 9:01 PM, Rich Persaud <persaur@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On a similarly pragmatic note: would a variation of Anthony's vixen patch 
> series be suitable for pre-PVH Xen 4.6 - 4.9?  These versions are currently 
> documented as security-supported (Oct 2018 - July 2020).

Hmm, Ian's mail seems to be focusing on the idea of checking in a
non-polished series to 4.10, rather than exctly what the content of
that series would be.

In the IRL conversation that preceeded this mail, the new short-term
target we discussed was:
1. A 4.10-based shim that could boot either under HVM or PVH
2. A script that would take an existing PV config, and spit out a) a
bootable ISO with the shim & whatever was needed, and b) a new config
that would boot the same VM, but in HVM mode with the shim

The script + a 4.10 shim binary *should* allow most PV guests to boot
without any changes whatsoever for most older versions of Xen.

There are a number of people for whom this won't work; I think we also
need to provide a way to transparently change PV guests into PVshim
guests.  But that will necessarily involve significant toolstack
functionality, at which point you might as well backport PVH as well.

 -George

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