Bugzilla Bug 144994

There's currently no stable version of xen. This bug should depend on any thing
that's holding up stabilisation of either 3.0.2 or the coming 3.0.3.

While 3.0.2 is reasonably well tested for paravirtualization (especially with
Gentoo guests), I don't think HVM  is ready for stablisation - bug #142969 is a
good example of this.

The HVM situation should improve with 3.0.3, and with positive reports from
users we can proceed with stabilisation then (unless we stablise Xen with
paravirtualization functionality only).

3.0.3 has been released. What's the status on this one?

3.0.4 released with 2.6.19 kernel support

Bump: 3.1 has been released

3.1 from svn://thestonertree.com/mescalito@5, pulled in via layman, has worked
flawlessly here for at least 2 months in full production use.
I use HVM capable CPUs, but all Gentoo paravirtualized guests.

Mike, I don't want to derogate the efforts of thestonertree.com, but if you
want to help testing ebuilds for 2.6.18/.20 (and 21 to come) kernels which will
go to the tree, please use those from our Xen overlay (overlays.gentoo.org,
layman -a xen).

(In reply to comment #6)
> Mike, I don't want to derogate the efforts of thestonertree.com, but if you
> want to help testing ebuilds for 2.6.18/.20 (and 21 to come) kernels which will
> go to the tree, please use those from our Xen overlay (overlays.gentoo.org,
> layman -a xen).
> 

Wow, there's an "official" gentoo Xen overlay!?
mescalito (thestonertree.com) was the only place I could find with a 3.1 ebuild
at the time I was looking.

I'll gladly put the xen overlay on our testing/dev servers, probably this week,
and give it a go.

lalala

(In reply to comment #8)
> lalala
> 

Deck the halls with stale Xen bugs, tra la la la la, la la la la
How about just ping me next time, tra la la la la, la la la la

Seriously though, leaving a 'lalala' comment in all of the xen bugs isn't very
helpful. I already know I've been bad and neglecting xen :-(

At this point I'm mainly just waiting on a Xen kernel that doesn't suck.
Redhat/Fedora's recent xen kernel work is really the only hope at the moment
but I haven't had a chance to test it well enough to put into the gentoo tree.

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > lalala
> 
> Deck the halls with stale Xen bugs, tra la la la la, la la la la
> How about just ping me next time, tra la la la la, la la la la

:D

> Seriously though, leaving a 'lalala' comment in all of the xen bugs isn't very
> helpful. I already know I've been bad and neglecting xen :-(

At least I got some reaction -- that's all I meant to provoke :>

> At this point I'm mainly just waiting on a Xen kernel that doesn't suck.
> Redhat/Fedora's recent xen kernel work is really the only hope at the moment
> but I haven't had a chance to test it well enough to put into the gentoo tree.

Ok. Thanks for the explanation!

What about a stabilization of Xen itself?
And what about xen-sources-2.6.18 -- does it suck so much?!

(In reply to comment #10)
> (In reply to comment #9)
> > (In reply to comment #8)
> > > lalala
> > 
> > Deck the halls with stale Xen bugs, tra la la la la, la la la la
> > How about just ping me next time, tra la la la la, la la la la
> 
> :D
> 
> > Seriously though, leaving a 'lalala' comment in all of the xen bugs isn't very
> > helpful. I already know I've been bad and neglecting xen :-(
> 
> At least I got some reaction -- that's all I meant to provoke :>
> 
> > At this point I'm mainly just waiting on a Xen kernel that doesn't suck.
> > Redhat/Fedora's recent xen kernel work is really the only hope at the moment
> > but I haven't had a chance to test it well enough to put into the gentoo tree.
> 
> Ok. Thanks for the explanation!
> 
> What about a stabilization of Xen itself?
> And what about xen-sources-2.6.18 -- does it suck so much?!
> 

The 2.6.18 is the most reliable kernel in the tree currently but being an older
kernel it has a tendency to pile up security issues. rbu has been keeping it up
to date by pulling the security patches from debian's kernel since they also
use 2.6.18 but I haven't tried to stabilize it because I wasn't positive we
would be able to keep it up to date security wise into the future.

At this point the 2.6.18 is supported upstream with new Xen patch releases, and
downstream with Security fixes. As said, I would not be able to maintain this
kernel security-wise if it was not for other distributions doing the legwork.
Debian will release Lenny with a new kernel in/after September. Theoretically,
the old stable kernel would be supported after that, but as always the support
will get more and more constrained. We should be safe at least until the end of
the year, so I would say: Go for it, stable that kernel, and the 3.2.1
userspace :-)

We might want to polish off some of the bugs before that. Wolfram, you are more
then welcome to help, either with patches or comments.

On the status of the RedHat work: They improved and extended DomU support on
top off paravirt_ops, but I do not see they have gotten Dom0 anywhere near
testing or production quality. My guess is that this will take more time than
expected beforehand.

Update:

Some Citrix programmers have been banging out dom0 support.  I am hoping the
majority of the patches hit 2.6.30.  Perhaps xen-sources could then apply a
minimal patchset on top for near-mainline kernel tracking and aid in
stabilizing Xen.