Re: XEN3_DOM0 rationalization

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2021 at 08:24:25PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
> "Greg A. Woods" <woods%planix.ca@localhost> writes:
> 
> > At Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:41:01 -0500, Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
> > Subject: XEN3_DOM0 rationalization
> >>
> >>   4) hardware that's very crufty and maybe we don't (cardbus/pcmcia) but
> >>   maybe we do
> >
> > I would say you could get rid of much of that kind of stuff too....
> >
> > (but then again I only run Xen on semi-modern servers... though it might
> > be fun to try using on an old MacBook Pro, etc. ala XenClient)
> 
> Where I'm coming from is that I see two styles of using Xen.  One I'd
> call serious use, where you find a box that is adequate to run some
> domUs with a level of CPU/RAM/disk where you would actually want them to
> be doing something useful.  My box is towards the low end of that today:
> 2 E5700 CPUs, 8G RAM, 1T SSD -- basically a very nice computer from 2010
> with a disk upgrade.
> 
> The other I'd call "trying it out", where someone has a computer that
> will boot GENERIC amd64 that can run Xen, which means at least one CPU,
> and probably at least 1G of RAM.  On such a box it should be fairly easy
> to install xen{kernel,tools}413, adjust boot.cfg and reboot.  As part of
> making the Xen learning curve less painful, I have a notion that there
> shouldn't be hardware support regresssions from GENERIC to XEN3_DOM0.  I
> have a MBP from 2008 that I might have tried this on (Core 2 Duo, 4GB).
> 
> I guess there's a larger question of whether GENERIC should still
> support cardbus/pcmcia, or whether one should neeed RETROGENERIC for
> that.  But I don't want to push that question.  And in the end I don't
> see a good reason for XEN3_DOM0 to decline to support things that work
> on GENERIC.

I'm not sure cardbus/pcmcia will work on Xen/dom0, as it requires
dynamic allocation of I/O ressources. I expect some issues in this area.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--