[Pkg-xen-devel] Big machines support by Debian Xen

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 10:12:16AM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 10:43:07AM +0300, Nikita V. Youshchenko wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 01:52:40PM +0300, Nikita V. Youshchenko wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 11:58:20PM +0300, Nikita V. Youshchenko
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi!
> > > > >
> > > > > > As far as I understand, using "big machines" is not currently
> > > > > > possible within debian xen packages, because there is no kernel
> > > > > > with pae support to use in domain 0, which in turn forces to use
> > > > > > non-pae supervisor, which makes most of system memory unavailable.
> > > > >
> > > > > If what you're missing is a linux kernel compiled for pae that's a
> > > > > kernel not a pkg-xen issue...
> > > > >
> > > > > > I'd like to ask what is debian xen team's current position on
> > > > > > providing support for "big machines". Is debian xen team
> > > > > > interested in such support?
> > > > >
> > > > > We'd currently like to support it and we provide the pae
> > > > > hypervisor... The missing link is in the kernel team... In the
> > > > > meantime you could use debian xen's packages and build your own
> > > > > kernels and maybe check with the kernel team about why they are not
> > > > > provide...
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for your reply. I was sure that this question should be in
> > > > control of pkg-xen team; the person who replied me in 390862 looks to
> > > > be the member of the both kernel and pkg-xen teams.
> > > >
> > > > Anyway now it's too late since etch is already frozen :(.
> > > > Hope to have things better in etch+1, after some more years of
> > > > self-compiling :).
> > > >
> > > > Sorry for the noise.
> > >
> > > This is really bad news.
> > >
> > > FC5 (with recent update), FC6 and RHEL5 are all using PAE versions of
> > > Xen. Stable version of Debian won't be compatible/interoperable with
> > > them.. :(
> > 
> > I don't see any interoperability issues here.
> > 
> > Just FC5/FC6/RHEL5 do support big machines out of the box, and debian etch 
> > will not. Because someone in kernel team thinks this is "not appropriate" 
> > (see #390862). Quite frustrating.
> > 
> 
> As far as I know, redhat has gone PAE-only with FC5/FC6/RHEL5 xen kernels. 
> 
> Using debian as a dom0 or domU with redhat releases would require custom
> compiled PAE kernels..
> 

And that's because of xen does not allow using non-pae kernel with pae xen,
or pae-kernel with non-pae-xen.

-- Pasi
       
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