Re: PAE/non-PAE Xen kernel

[Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>]

On 12/25/09 21:30, Étienne wrote:
> Hello list, and merry Christmas,
>
> I'm trying to set up a Dom0 host with NetBSD-5.0.1 and Xen from the
> 2009Q3 pkgsrc. The machine is an "old" AMD Athlon, and while booting I
> get a panic from Xen (that I have just 5 sec to read) about a mismatch
> between Xen kernel and Dom0 kernel on PAE capabilities ? It looks like
> the one described there:
> http://old.nabble.com/Problem-with-PAE-less-processor-in-xen-3.1.0-td15396918.html
>
> If I get it right, I need to build a Xen kernel without PAE support.
> How do I do that in pkgsrc ? And by the way, is there any way to keep
> Xen from rebooting at this point so you can read what exactly happens ?
>
> Thanks for your interest in my question.

Yeah, this clearly needs to be documented.

Current state for NetBSD:
NetBSD-4: no PAE for dom0 and domU
NetBSD-5: PAE only for domU
NetBSD-current: PAE for dom0 and domU

Given that:

== Xen 3.1 (sysutils/xenkernel3 && sysutils/xentools3) ==

If you want to use a NetBSD dom0 other than current, choose to boot with
/usr/pkg/xen3-kernel/xen.gz

== Xen 3.3 (sysutils/xenkernel33 && sysutils/xentools33) ==

Xen removed support of non-PAE kernels for i386 starting with Xen 3.3. 
As a consequence, only a NetBSD-current kernel can work as dom0 under i386.

--
Jean-Yves Migeon
jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost