Hi all, well, Xen is up and running for me. Console only at the moment, but hey, you can''t have everything, right? :o) I wonder where things are with automatic assignment of loopback devices to image files. This would be very useful to me, as it means there''s a whole bunch of automation I won''t have to write. Ian, you mentioned in the "Re: Practical questions, ssh a domain, HD (Xen-Unstable)" thread that you guys were planning to have xend track free loop devices and do the allocation. I would love to have to do nothing more than specify [ ''loop:vm1disk,sda1,w'' ]. Were I a programmer (I''m working on it!), I''d be offering to get my hands dirty, but I''m not so I''m volunteering to test it for you! :oP Seriously though, it would be good to see this feature on the Roadmap so curious folks such as I won''t bother you with feature questions. Perhaps there should be ''tweaks and refinements'' and ''tools'' sections under the main roadmap feature list. I''d like to volunteer to help (after I''ve had another couple of weeks playing with Xen so I''ve got the concepts understood) with documentation, wiki maintenance, etc. For this to be successful though, I think I''d need someone I can pester to confirm that whatever I write is accurate. If there''s anything I can contribute in the meantime however, let me know! Paul ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
> I wonder where things are with automatic assignment of loopback devices to > image files. This would be very useful to me, as it means there''s a whole > bunch of automation I won''t have to write. > > Ian, you mentioned in the "Re: Practical questions, ssh a domain, HD > (Xen-Unstable)" thread that you guys were planning to have xend track free > loop devices and do the allocation. I would love to have to do nothing more > than specify [ ''loop:vm1disk,sda1,w'' ].Nope, I''m afraid I don''t think anyone''s actually got around to implementing this yet. I think that more people probably use LVM than loopback sparse files, which avoids the issue of assigning loopback devices. LVM2''s CoW persistent snapshot feature is actually pretty nice.> I''d like to volunteer to help (after I''ve had another couple of weeks playing > with Xen so I''ve got the concepts understood) with documentation, wiki > maintenance, etc. For this to be successful though, I think I''d need someone > I can pester to confirm that whatever I write is accurate. If there''s > anything I can contribute in the meantime however, let me know!Cool. Feel free to post questions to the list. Cheers, Ian ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
> Ian, you mentioned in the "Re: Practical questions, ssh a domain, HD > (Xen-Unstable)" thread that you guys were planning to have xend track free > loop devices and do the allocation. I would love to have to do nothing more > than specify [ ''loop:vm1disk,sda1,w'' ].It seems this is a popular request. Is anybody working on this at the moment? If not, I''ll do it. Cheers, Mark ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
I for one would really appreciate the effort Mark. Another thing that I would really like to see is support for big memory (and I''m not implying that Mark should do this too! :o) ). Eventually of course we''ll be using 64 bit machines, but we will still have a number of dual Xeon machines in our cluster and being limited by the amount of RAM we can use is a potential concern (we''ll be running MySQL databases on quite a proportion of the VMs). At the moment I have 4GB in each node, but I''d like to be able to raise that to 12GB. I know this is probably non-trivial, but I think it would be widely used, especially by folks with large numbers of 32 bit machines converted to use Xen. Am I correct in my understanding that the primary reason for not supporting big memory was due to problems with earlier Xen implementations? Is it still a very difficult problem? I''m still finding my way around Xen''s architecture, so please forgive me if this is not a sensible question. Regards, Paul On Friday 24 September 2004 02:46 am, Mark A. Williamson wrote:> > Ian, you mentioned in the "Re: Practical questions, ssh a domain, HD > > (Xen-Unstable)" thread that you guys were planning to have xend track > > free loop devices and do the allocation. I would love to have to do > > nothing more than specify [ ''loop:vm1disk,sda1,w'' ]. > > It seems this is a popular request. Is anybody working on this at the > moment? > > If not, I''ll do it. > > Cheers, > Mark > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 > Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on > who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. > Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php > _______________________________________________ > Xen-devel mailing list > Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
> Another thing that I would really like to see is support for big memory (and > I''m not implying that Mark should do this too! :o) ). Eventually of course > we''ll be using 64 bit machines, but we will still have a number of dual Xeon > machines in our cluster and being limited by the amount of RAM we can use is > a potential concern (we''ll be running MySQL databases on quite a proportion > of the VMs). At the moment I have 4GB in each node, but I''d like to be able > to raise that to 12GB. I know this is probably non-trivial, but I think it > would be widely used, especially by folks with large numbers of 32 bit > machines converted to use Xen.It wouldn''t be particularly difficult to add support for x86_32 systems with more than 4GB, but would be a fair amount of work and isn''t very high on our priority list. The PAE36 3-level page tables are all a bit of a hack, and we''d much rather put our efforts into x86_64. I don''t reckon there are that many x86 systems with more than 4GB in use right now, and everything on the market will be x86_64 very soon anyhow. Ian ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
On Friday 24 September 2004 09:18 am, Ian Pratt wrote:> > Another thing that I would really like to see is support for big memory > > (and I''m not implying that Mark should do this too! :o) ). Eventually of > > course we''ll be using 64 bit machines, but we will still have a number of > > dual Xeon machines in our cluster and being limited by the amount of RAM > > we can use is a potential concern (we''ll be running MySQL databases on > > quite a proportion of the VMs). At the moment I have 4GB in each node, > > but I''d like to be able to raise that to 12GB. I know this is probably > > non-trivial, but I think it would be widely used, especially by folks > > with large numbers of 32 bit machines converted to use Xen. > > It wouldn''t be particularly difficult to add support for x86_32 > systems with more than 4GB, but would be a fair amount of work > and isn''t very high on our priority list. The PAE36 3-level page > tables are all a bit of a hack, and we''d much rather put our > efforts into x86_64. > > I don''t reckon there are that many x86 systems with more than 4GB > in use right now, and everything on the market will be x86_64 > very soon anyhow. > > IanTrue, but I would expect that many people looking to shift to a Xen-based architecture would want to migrate their current hardware. RAM is a cheap upgrade these days and I would expect that Xen installations would benefit if they could use lots of it. You guys are the ones doing the hard work though and I''m very happy with what you have done so far. But if ever you find yourselves thingking, hmm, what to do next? Well, you know what I''d love you to do!! :o) As an aside, do I need to do anything special for my 4GB machines at the moment? How much of the 4GB will Xen be able to use out of the box? Regards, Paul ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel
> True, but I would expect that many people looking to shift to a Xen-based > architecture would want to migrate their current hardware. RAM is a cheap > upgrade these days and I would expect that Xen installations would benefit if > they could use lots of it. You guys are the ones doing the hard work though > and I''m very happy with what you have done so far. But if ever you find > yourselves thingking, hmm, what to do next? Well, you know what I''d love you > to do!! :o)Noted.> As an aside, do I need to do anything special for my 4GB machines at the > moment? How much of the 4GB will Xen be able to use out of the box?Xen should be able to use all 4GB, less any that has to be given up due to IO mapped regions (e.g. maybe 32MB for the graphics card etc). If you want individual domains to be bigger than ~800MB you''ll have to enable CONFIG_HIGMEM4GB in the config just like you would with native linux. Ian ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel