Re: xen daemon situation

[Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau%citrix.com@localhost>]

On 02/01/13 07:32, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
> I find myself falling further down the xen rabbit hole and am still a
> bit confused as to what xen-related daemons are necessary under what
> conditions.
> 
> I seem to only be able to get things working with (o)xenstored, xend,
> xenconsoled, and xenbackendd running, even when only using xl.

Having xend running while using xl can cause all sort of strange issues.

> 
> my understanding is that xend and xenbackendd are deprecated and if I'm
> only using xl, I should only need (o)xenstored and xenconsoled running.
> is this correct?

Yes, xl only needs xenstore and xenconsole.

> 
> if I don't run xend, my dom0 name shows up as (null) instead of
> Domain-0, 

Dom0 name is set by xencommons init script.

> and if I don't run xenbackendd, devices don't get attached to
> the back end in the dom0, even if I create domUs with xl.  is this
> something send-PR-worthy?

What version of Xen are you using? xl is only supported on NetBSD
starting with 4.2.

> 
> what does xenwatchdogd do, anyway?  I can't seem to find any
> documentation on it, and asking takes less of my time than crawling
> through the source code...  :)

xen watchdog is used to check a list of DomUs to see if they are
running, so you can perform automatic actions when a DomU crashes. I've
never used this, so I'm afraid I don't know whether the code works or not.