Sorry - I''d written a draft of that mail a while ago and had forgotten
to update it:
> we''re going to stop delivering 32-bit xen.gz and the disk and
> networking backend drivers used in dom0 at or around the same time we
> putback the 3.3 port that''s been ongoing. This work is currently
> targeting nv_125.
To clarify, the 3.3 work went back into nv_121, the 32-bit dom0 removal
is targeting nv_125. Apologies for any confusion caused.
cheers,
tim
On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 13:17 +0100, Tim Foster wrote:> Hi all,
>
> This is a head-up to let you know, that as part of
>
> 6851808 Stop delivering 32-bit dom0
> http://bugs.opensolaris.org/view_bug.do?bug_id=6851808
>
> we''re going to stop delivering 32-bit xen.gz and the disk and
networking
> backend drivers used in dom0 at or around the same time we putback the
> 3.3 port that''s been ongoing. This work is currently targeting
nv_125.
>
> The rationale is explained in the bug report, which I''ll reproduce
here:
>
> --
> Description:
>
> There is a desire to stop delivering the 32-bit xVM hypervisor in
> OpenSolaris.
>
> Machines that typically run xVM have many guests, one of the central
> roles of virtualization (to consolidate many physical machines). The
> limitations of a 4gb address space make it unfeasible to support many
> modern OS guests on 32-bit systems.
>
> To add, these small systems become a maintenance and testing burden for
> the test and development team: time that would be better spent adding
> features to 64-bit dom0 or improving performance and quality.
>
> Removing the 32-bit hypervisor and dom0 will not have any effect on
> guests - we can still run 32-bit guests on a 64-bit dom0.
>
> It is proposed to do this work in two stages:
>
> * stop delivering the hypervisor itself and the kernel backend drivers
> * stop delivering the 32-bit binaries for the userland components
>
> This bug addresses the former. The latter is a little more complex as
> some of the userland components are currently tied to 32-bit
> by /usr/bin/virt-manager, which itself depends on a library from a
> separate Consolidation that is only delivered compiled as 32-bit
> --
>
> Other than upgrading to 64-bit capable hardware, for users still
> interested in virtualization on 32-bit machines, the options are:
>
> * OpenSolaris Containers, if using the same kernel version in
> the guest and host (or using one of the branded zones if they
> support the version of Solaris you need)
>
> * VirtualBox for Linux, Windows and other guests operating systems
>
> After this change, the error message you would see if you were to try to
> boot from an xVM grub entry on a 32-bit machine would look like:
>
> ---------------------------------
> findroot (BE_snv_125,0,a)
> Filesystem type is zfs, partition type 0x82
> bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1
> kernel$ /boot/$ISADIR/xen.gz
> loading ''/boot/$ISADIR/xen.gz'' ...
>
> Error 15: File not found
>
> Press any key to continue...
> ---------------------------------
>
> Feedback to xen-discuss@opensolaris.org is welcome. We''ll send a
> wider-reaching flag-day message when the change integrates.
>
> cheers,
> tim
>
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