Louis Guillaume <louis%zabrico.com@localhost> writes: > Ok - I get the overall way the block devices or files are mapped into > the guest machines. But I'm still confused here: > > I can create a regular file and make it available as a disk using > > disk = [ 'file:/srv/xen/host-disk0,0x1,w' ] > > ... as you described. But why do we need the vnd device? Just > accessing the file itself does the trick for domU. Is some > vnconfigging going on automatically that I don't know about? I can Yes, the startup script finds a vnd and vnconfigs it and points the domU at the vnd. This is far easier than doing it explicitly. see the logs. > also do this... > > disk = [ 'phy:/dev/vnd0d,0x05,w' ] > > ... and get effectively the same results, except that I'm > *referencing* the vnd device in the config. Essentially that means ALL > my vnd devices must be configured BEFORE I start up the guests. yes, this is why the script is nice. > What would be the benefit of the latter situation? If I wanted to > configure any of my files as vnd devices I can just vnconfig a vnd > device on those files and voila! I see everything; partition map; > disklabel - everything. > > I still don't see any reason for vnd here. Because it won't work without it, because (apparently) the dom0 kernel has to be handed a block device. > Ok - I get this. We can vnconfig in dom0 to access the data in our > guest system. That is a perfectly valid use here. But it hasn't > anything to do with xen, or the xen configuration/booting environment. true.
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