Behaviour of update-grub when Xen enabled kernels are installed.

[Robert Millan]

Hi Joey,

Based on what Ian said, I'm inclined to revert the patch you sent in bug
#404536, since it appears to no longer be needed.

Please can you check if this is alright?

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 10:36:38AM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> The version of update-grub in Debian's grub-legacy packages[0] has an
> interesting feature where it attempts to detect when I kernel is
> compiled for Xen and chooses to include it in the menu depending on
> whether it is running inside a Xen guest domain or not[1].
> 
> As described at [2] this behaviour has been broken by the latest kernels
> which due to the paravirt_ops (CONFIG_PARAVIRT) framework which means
> that these kernels are now bootable both native and as a Xen guest
> domain.
> 
> Robert asked me to bring the issue here and to ask the question of
> whether or not this behaviour would be welcomed as a patch to grub 2.
> 
> Personally I am not a fan of this behaviour since it causes the wrong
> thing to occur in several circumstances, i.e. installing into a chroot
> or switching back and forth between fully- and para-virtualised
> operation and as time moves on CONFIG_PARAVIRT will become the norm and
> the behaviour less necessary in general. What is the opinion of the grub
> 2 devs?
> 
> Cheers,
> Ian.
> [0] For those not familiar with Xen the classical Xen kernels cannot be
> run on bare metal so there is an argument that it makes little sense to
> include them in the menu for the control domain, conversely including a
> native kernel in the menu for a guest domain is not terribly useful
> either. CONFIG_PARAVIRT (2.6.22+) changes this and such kernel is now
> bootable on native and under Xen.
> [1]
> http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-grub/grub/trunk/debian/update-grub?view=auto
> [2]
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grub-devel/2008-April/004701.html http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grub-devel/2008-May/004821.html
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ian Campbell
> 
> Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
> 		-- Euripides



-- 
Robert Millan

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<DRM> What good is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?
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