Re: Converting PV to HVM - boot methods

[Stephen Borrill <netbsd%precedence.co.uk@localhost>]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2025, Stephen Borrill wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Apr 2025, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 05:25:14PM +0100, Stephen Borrill wrote:
> > > On Thu, 24 Apr 2025, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 03:06:53PM +0100, Stephen Borrill wrote:
> > > > > I've set this to port-i386 rather than port-xen as it's more about the 
> > > > > x86
> > > > > boot process rather than Xen.
> > > > >
> > > > > I have a (large) number of PV Xen VMs. These were created from a disk 
> > > > > image
> > > > > built with makefs that the sets were extracted into. This means there is 
> > > > > no
> > > > > partitioning except for disklabel and the root partition begins at 
> > > > > sector 0:
> > > > >
> > > > > [...]
> > > > > This all works fine, but I'm interested in others' alternatives 
> > > > > suggestions.
> > > >
> > > > If you're running netbsd-10 you should be able to boot PVH the same way 
> > > > you
> > > > boot PV; just replace the XEN3_DOMU kernel with GENERIC
> > >
> > > Unfortunately not, you snipped out this bit:
> > >
> > > > Now that XenServer and XCP-ng no longer support PV booting (and
> > > > PV-in-PVH doesn't work either) [...]
> > >
> > > I would love to use PVH as it works brilliantly with the xl toolstck, but
> > > it's not an option with XenServer or XCP-ng.
> >
> > That PV-in-PVH doesn't work doesn't imply that PVH isn't working ...
>
> PVH simply isn't an option. The options for domain-type are only pv and hvm. 
> On the very latest XenServer/XCP-ng, pv-in-pvh is an additional option which 
> is the equivalent of pvshim:
>
> https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/10633/status-of-pvh

As I've added to the above thread, the xl toolstack is still available on 
XenServer, so I was able to test PVH and PV-in-PVH (pvshim) and they both 
worked. However, this makes the VM's invisible to XenServer, so is not 
really an option. It does show that with a little work, xapi should be 
able to support them both though.

--
Stephen