Bug#500336: patch for grub detection

[Ian Campbell]

On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 21:18 +0200, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Ian Campbell wrote:
> > My only concern would be the behaviour when running in a domU. I haven't
> > looked very closely at the patch yet but a comment says
> > +#     CONFIG_XEN + NO CONFIG_PARAVIRT
> > +#     --> domU capable, but must not show up in grub
> > 
> > which sounds like menu.lst in a guest domain will end up omitting the
> > non-paravirt Xen kernels. These entries are needed to allow booting via
> > pygrub. Lenny does include such images now due to the use of the SuSE
> > patch which makes e.g. 2.6.26-1-xen-amd64 look this way. People
> > upgrading a domU from Etch will likely end up with this style image
> > installed as well.
> 
> No, 2.6.26-1-xen-amd64/lenny is actually capable of both.

Both what?

> So the problem would bite people upgrading grub but not the kernel.

Someone who installs 2.6.26-1-xen-amd64 in a Lenny domU with the Lenny
version of grub would end up with a menu.lst which did not contain this
kernel, which would be incorrect.

> Ideally, one would add way to collect domU-only kernels (with some
> commented-out-magic or in a separate pygrub.menu.lst) for a patched pygrub.

I think in an earlier version of the patch which became the current
stuff had a magic variable thing. I think I'd be happy with a
commented-out-magic IFF there is absolutely no way to make it work by
default.

> To be honest, having a non-virtual (i.e. native or dom0) boot fail
> seems worse than having a virtual machine fail to boot to me because
> the former is inherently more opaque from a distance (yeah, serial
> consoles work, but suck).

If you are the admin of a domU with no access rights to dom0 (common
with hosting providers) then I think the two are equivalent.

Ian.
-- 
Ian Campbell

Some men are discovered; others are found out.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grub-devel/attachments/20081021/80b46ebb/attachment.pgp