Xen users - Apr 2013 - Xen on a MacBook Pro? The ultimate developer setup?

Hi All,

I have a 2011 MacBook Pro with 16gb of RAM and 1.5tb. (I took out the
optical drive and striped together 2 x 750gb.)

I write code, C++ and I am not in a position where I need to run Windows,
Linux and OS X, various versions.

I have read about Xen-hypervisor before.

My questions:
1. How is the compatibility on a macBook Pro? I can get a live-cd and try
this out.

2. With VM''s running, would I just use them on the MacBook Pro like I
normally would (like you can a VMWare virtual machine)?

3. What about closing the lib and going home? Is there suspend on the
hypervisor? Would I need to suspend each VM, then close the lid or is that
really not supported.

4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and backup
the vm''s if I needed to?

I''d love to hear thoughts.

Jason


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http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

I can''t answer most of your questions, but I got XCP running on a new
mac
mini this weekend. The only trick was getting it to boot after
installation. Had to bring up the recovery partition and bless the hard
drive. More info:
http://www.plainlystated.com/2013/04/xcp-xen-on-a-mac-mini/


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Jason T. Slack-Moehrle <
slackmoehrle@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have a 2011 MacBook Pro with 16gb of RAM and 1.5tb. (I took out the
> optical drive and striped together 2 x 750gb.)
>
> I write code, C++ and I am not in a position where I need to run Windows,
> Linux and OS X, various versions.
>
> I have read about Xen-hypervisor before.
>
> My questions:
> 1. How is the compatibility on a macBook Pro? I can get a live-cd and try
> this out.
>
> 2. With VM''s running, would I just use them on the MacBook Pro
like I
> normally would (like you can a VMWare virtual machine)?
>
> 3. What about closing the lib and going home? Is there suspend on the
> hypervisor? Would I need to suspend each VM, then close the lid or is that
> really not supported.
>
> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and backup
> the vm''s if I needed to?
>
> I''d love to hear thoughts.
>
> Jason
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users
>

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Jason T. Slack-Moehrle wrote:
> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and 
> backup the vm''s if I needed to?
Not sure why you think you''d need to "extend Xen". 
Can''t imagine that
you''ll ever "scp into the hypervisor"; you could scp into the
dom0, if
you wanted to set that up.  More likely, you''d run your domUs on LVs
and
scp *from* the dom0, from mounted snapshots.  Or copy to a USB drive.

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Mike <debian@good-with-numbers.com>
wrote:
> Jason T. Slack-Moehrle wrote:
>> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and
>> backup the vm''s if I needed to?
>
> Not sure why you think you''d need to "extend Xen". 
Can''t imagine that
> you''ll ever "scp into the hypervisor"; you could scp
into the dom0, if
> you wanted to set that up.  More likely, you''d run your domUs on
LVs and
> scp *from* the dom0, from mounted snapshots.  Or copy to a USB drive.

@Mike: I think the main issue is that Jason thinks Xen is a drop-in
replacement for vmware workstation. It''s not.

@Jason: You can try the live cd, but IMHO it''s not worthed. Looking at
your questions, it seems you''d be better off with virtualbox or
vmware. Seriously.

-- 
Fajar

I would suggest that Xen is not going to get you what you want; to my
knowledge, you cannot simply virtualize OSX on top of Xen even on a
Macbook, as OSX looks for a special piece of hardware that Xen does not
(and perhaps legally cannot) virtualize. Passthrough may get you there, but
that''s a whole, huge can of worms that you should probably read more
about
before considering.


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Patrick Schless
<patrick.schless@gmail.com>wrote:
> I can''t answer most of your questions, but I got XCP running on a
new mac
> mini this weekend. The only trick was getting it to boot after
> installation. Had to bring up the recovery partition and bless the hard
> drive. More info:
> http://www.plainlystated.com/2013/04/xcp-xen-on-a-mac-mini/
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Jason T. Slack-Moehrle <
> slackmoehrle@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have a 2011 MacBook Pro with 16gb of RAM and 1.5tb. (I took out the
>> optical drive and striped together 2 x 750gb.)
>>
>> I write code, C++ and I am not in a position where I need to run
Windows,
>> Linux and OS X, various versions.
>>
>> I have read about Xen-hypervisor before.
>>
>> My questions:
>> 1. How is the compatibility on a macBook Pro? I can get a live-cd and
try
>> this out.
>>
>> 2. With VM''s running, would I just use them on the MacBook Pro
like I
>> normally would (like you can a VMWare virtual machine)?
>>
>> 3. What about closing the lib and going home? Is there suspend on the
>> hypervisor? Would I need to suspend each VM, then close the lid or is
that
>> really not supported.
>>
>> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and
backup
>> the vm''s if I needed to?
>>
>> I''d love to hear thoughts.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Xen-users mailing list
>> Xen-users@lists.xen.org
>> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users
>

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Hello John,

On Apr 10, 2013, at 9:00 PM, John Sherwood <jrs@vt.edu> wrote:
> I would suggest that Xen is not going to get you what you want; to my
knowledge, you cannot simply virtualize OSX on top of Xen even on a Macbook, as
OSX looks for a special piece of hardware that Xen does not (and perhaps legally
cannot) virtualize. Passthrough may get you there, but that''s a whole,
huge can of worms that you should probably read more about before considering.
<snip>

I believe that, with a difficult-to-quantify amount of work, whatever
allows standard builds of OS X to run on a commodity x86/64 system
could theoretically also allow Xen to host the OS in an HVM DomU.  I
always figured that it has been done, but never looked into it beyond
some basic googling.

My interest in it was to see if it was possible to run it on a Xen
host with an IOMMU.  Install it alongside Windows and Linux, PCI
Hotplug a single video card around for the ultimate triple-boot :P

Just my two cents, of course! ;)

Cheers,
Andrew

I''ve actually set up an MBP similarly before, but couldn''t get
OSX to
install. Part of the appeal of using an MBP as the platform is that the IO
peripherals (keyboard/trackpad) are connected as USB devices, which is much
more passthrough friendly than the somewhat more common serial connections
that I was finding on Dells. It''s definitely doable if you want to use
linux and windows VMs, but I''d suggest you''d want to engage
the developers
list if you want to try and passthrough whatever hardware is used by OSX to
control installation.


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Andrew Bobulsky <rulerof@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> On Apr 10, 2013, at 9:00 PM, John Sherwood <jrs@vt.edu> wrote:
>
> > I would suggest that Xen is not going to get you what you want; to my
> knowledge, you cannot simply virtualize OSX on top of Xen even on a
> Macbook, as OSX looks for a special piece of hardware that Xen does not
> (and perhaps legally cannot) virtualize. Passthrough may get you there, but
> that''s a whole, huge can of worms that you should probably read
more about
> before considering.
> <snip>
>
> I believe that, with a difficult-to-quantify amount of work, whatever
> allows standard builds of OS X to run on a commodity x86/64 system
> could theoretically also allow Xen to host the OS in an HVM DomU.  I
> always figured that it has been done, but never looked into it beyond
> some basic googling.
>
> My interest in it was to see if it was possible to run it on a Xen
> host with an IOMMU.  Install it alongside Windows and Linux, PCI
> Hotplug a single video card around for the ultimate triple-boot :P
>
> Just my two cents, of course! ;)
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
>

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Xen-users@lists.xen.org
http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

"Jason T. Slack-Moehrle" <slackmoehrle@gmail.com>
schrieb:
>I write code, C++ and I am not in a position where I need to run
>Windows,
>Linux and OS X, various versions.
>
>I have read about Xen-hypervisor before.
>
>My questions:
>1. How is the compatibility on a macBook Pro? I can get a live-cd and
>try
>this out.
You can test/use Xen even on x86 (Intel) Mac Book Pro (i have a MBP6.1) but not
"under" Mac OSX.

I have a "dual boot" between Mac OSX and xen with Linux Dom0.

If you want to get Mac OSX running as a PV DomU or even Dom0 under xen you might
ask Apple if they integrate xen PV into their OS (this should be theoretically
possible as the OS comes from NetBSD in many parts and NetBSD offers Xen DomU
and Dom0.

This would offer you a full performance Mac OSX with full performance guests ß)

But i assume that Apple won''t doing that att ß)

Virtualizing Mac OSX could be done under VirtualBox with slightly patching
i''ve tried some years ago.

>2. With VM''s running, would I just use them on the MacBook Pro like
I
>normally would (like you can a VMWare virtual machine)?
Not shure what you mean.

>3. What about closing the lib and going home? Is there suspend on the
>hypervisor? Would I need to suspend each VM, then close the lid or is
>that
>really not supported.
It should be possible afaik - i.e. with additional scripts shutting down or
saving the running DomUs before suspend in the hibernate process of your Dom0.

>4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and
>backup
>the vm''s if I needed to?
No,
you can ssh/scp into your dom0 - the xen HV does not offer such high level
networking stuff as this is the job of the Dom0.

I recommend to read into the first steps of the xen docs to understand the
concept of xen.

hth
cheers,


Niels.



-- 
Niels Dettenbach
Syndicat IT&Internet
http://www.syndicat.com
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<html><head/><body><br>
&quot;Jason T. Slack-Moehrle&quot;
&lt;slackmoehrle@gmail.com&gt; schrieb:<br>
&gt;I write code, C++ and I am not in a position where I need to
run<br>
&gt;Windows,<br>
&gt;Linux and OS X, various versions.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;I have read about Xen-hypervisor before.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;My questions:<br>
&gt;1. How is the compatibility on a macBook Pro? I can get a live-cd
and<br>
&gt;try<br>
&gt;this out.<br>
<br>
You can test/use Xen even on x86 (Intel) Mac Book Pro (i have a MBP6.1) but not
&quot;under&quot; Mac OSX.<br>
<br>
I have a &quot;dual boot&quot; between Mac OSX and xen with Linux
Dom0.<br>
<br>
If you want to get Mac OSX running as a PV DomU or even Dom0 under xen you might
ask Apple if they integrate xen PV into their OS (this should be theoretically
possible as the OS comes from NetBSD in many parts and NetBSD offers Xen DomU
and Dom0.<br>
<br>
This would offer you a full performance Mac OSX with full performance guests
ß)<br>
<br>
But i assume that Apple won&#39;t doing that att ß)<br>
<br>
Virtualizing Mac OSX could be done under VirtualBox with slightly patching
i&#39;ve tried some years ago.<br>
<br>
<br>
&gt;2. With VM&#39;s running, would I just use them on the MacBook Pro
like I<br>
&gt;normally would (like you can a VMWare virtual machine)?<br>
<br>
Not shure what you mean.<br>
<br>
<br>
&gt;3. What about closing the lib and going home? Is there suspend on
the<br>
&gt;hypervisor? Would I need to suspend each VM, then close the lid or
is<br>
&gt;that<br>
&gt;really not supported.<br>
<br>
It should be possible afaik - i.e. with additional scripts shutting down or
saving the running DomUs before suspend in the hibernate process of your
Dom0.<br>
<br>
<br>
&gt;4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor
and<br>
&gt;backup<br>
&gt;the vm&#39;s if I needed to?<br>
No,<br>
you can ssh/scp into your dom0 - the xen HV does not offer such high level
networking stuff as this is the job of the Dom0.<br>
<br>
I recommend to read into the first steps of the xen docs to understand the
concept of xen.<br>
<br>
hth<br>
cheers,<br>
<br>
<br>
Niels.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Niels Dettenbach<br>
Syndicat IT&amp;Internet<br>
<a
href="http://www.syndicat.com">http://www.syndicat.com</a></body></html>
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Fajar,
>> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor and
> >> backup the vm''s if I needed to?
> >
> > Not sure why you think you''d need to "extend Xen". 
Can''t imagine that
> > you''ll ever "scp into the hypervisor"; you could
scp into the dom0, if
> > you wanted to set that up.  More likely, you''d run your domUs
on LVs and
> > scp *from* the dom0, from mounted snapshots.  Or copy to a USB drive.
>
>
> @Mike: I think the main issue is that Jason thinks Xen is a drop-in
> replacement for vmware workstation. It''s not.
>
> @Jason: You can try the live cd, but IMHO it''s not worthed.
Looking at
> your questions, it seems you''d be better off with virtualbox or
> vmware. Seriously.
>
Yes, that is seriously my confusion. Xen being a drop-in replacement for
VmWare. I supposed I have misinformation.

And here I was hoping for a dream! I mean wouldn''t it be a fantastic
setup?
The ability to boot ones machine, have other OS''s running along side
each
other, interact with them on a modern laptop that has the space and RAM to
accomodate it. switch back and forth between your environments with ease.

I wish I could put my development skills to use on something interesting
and awesome.

Jason


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Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xen.org
http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

On Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:29:28 -0500, Jason T. Slack-Moehrle  
<slackmoehrle@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, that is seriously my confusion. Xen being a drop-in replacement for
> VmWare. I supposed I have misinformation.
Even if Xen was a drop-in replacement for VMWare you are still confusing  
VMWare ESXi and VMWare Fusion/Workstation. VMWare ESXi and XEN do not give  
you any usable OS once installed, and even though work has been done on  
VGA passthrough I''m not aware of the ability to switch the Xen console
to
a different OS at this time.

Jason,

I have a MacBook Air 2012 running Xen (specifically, with Qubes OS,
discussed below), and it is a very good experience.  However, I have
become very frustrated that with only 4 GB of RAM, and no RAM upgrade
path other than purchasing a new system, it is difficult to get more
than one RAM-hungry consumer OS (esp OS X, which does not support
ballooning AFAIK) running at the same time.  This would not be a
problem with your system, I think.

Although you may be unfamiliar with Xen (and the learning curve
somewhat steep), I would not necessarily abandon the idea of its use.
Instead, consider having a more packaged experience.  Although don''t
worry - will still be plenty of obscure issues and arcane
configuration file settings (pretty much the Linux experience, I
suppose).

Specifically, check out Qubes OS (http://qubes-os.org/).  Not only can
you pursue the benefits you originally brought up, but you will learn
and come across a lot of interesting ideas with Qubes, such as
resource and service disaggregation for improved security.  There is a
white paper that, although it does not fully reflect the current Qubes
architecture, is a reasonable primer.  There are some profound
differences in how a properly-used Qubes environment works versus the
more ordinary OS (mainly a result of OS isolation).

As to the use of Qubes specifically on Mac hardware, check out:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/qubes-devel/uLDYGdKk_Dk
(what it took to get my MacBook Air running, including a workaround of
a buggy ACPI table entry to get the IOMMU working)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/qubes-devel/hag-MQDH_Vs
(a report for a MacBook Pro 6,2, which cannot provide an IOMMU)

I would guess (but have absolutely no experience with this) that
something like Citrix XenClient might also give you a more polished
and packaged experience to start with.  Odds are that some Google
searching woud lead you to at least one person who has detailed their
use of a MacBook.

I have not yet managed to virtualize OS X on my MacBook under Xen.  It
is somewhat disappointing that "it just works" in VirtualBox.  My
experience with OpenSolaris/Illumos has sadly been pretty much the
same.  On top of that, these failures have not been particularly
"debuggable" (especially on a machine lacking in ports).  Instead, if
you are lucky, you eventually arrive at a working combination of
configuration settings.  For example, recent things I came across were
(1) passing "cpu=host" to qemu-upstream breaking FreeBSD (of course,
it works just fine for the older version of qemu...), and (2) labeling
an exported drive with "xvda" versus "hda" making a
difference.
Ultimately, it seems that Linux and Windows are the only OSes you can
count on working under Xen, as they are what everyone is trying to
use.

That said, there are reports of OS X running under Xen.
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~somlo/OSXKVM/ probably offers the
best leads, particularly on the SMC issue.

Macs are not outright hostile to non-OS X installs, just very
difficult.  Probably the only reason they manage to boot other OSes
was the demand for Bootcamp-type dual booting of Windows.

With a MacBook, note that it is hit-or-miss whether the hardware will
provide IOMMU functionality, as it appears OS X does not make use of
it.  With Intel, BOTH the CPU and the NB/SB chipset have to support
Vt-D.  It can be surprisingly tricky to determine exactly which models
you have, and what support they offer in combination.  Then, on top of
that, many BIOS vendors have managed to screw up otherwise good
hardware by not correctly configuring the hardware, or providing
incorrect ACPI tables.

The desktop computer world, if you are not buying server-grade
hardware, is plagued with similar problems.  For example, it is just
about impossible to find a 970 chipset motherboard with a functioning
IOMMU (my favorite failed MB would clobber the USB port, and
consequently the keyboard, by the BIOS setting for IOMMU enable).
Even now, the board I settled with his a partially defective BIOS that
maybe the vendor will someday get around to fixing.

Note, however, that although IOMMU is "nice", but is often missing, it
is not necessary for virtualization. You can still run something like
Xen on most modern machines.

Best of luck,
Eric
> Fajar,
>
> > >> 4. Can one extend Xen so that I could scp into the hypervisor
and
> > >> backup the vm''s if I needed to?
> > >
> > > Not sure why you think you''d need to "extend
Xen".  Can''t imagine that
> > > you''ll ever "scp into the hypervisor"; you
could scp into the dom0, if
> > > you wanted to set that up.  More likely, you''d run your
domUs on LVs and
> > > scp *from* the dom0, from mounted snapshots.  Or copy to a USB
drive.
> >
> >
> > @Mike: I think the main issue is that Jason thinks Xen is a drop-in
> > replacement for vmware workstation. It''s not.
> >
> > @Jason: You can try the live cd, but IMHO it''s not worthed.
Looking at
> > your questions, it seems you''d be better off with virtualbox
or
> > vmware. Seriously.
>
> Yes, that is seriously my confusion. Xen being a drop-in replacement for
> VmWare. I supposed I have misinformation.
>
> And here I was hoping for a dream! I mean wouldn''t it be a
fantastic setup?
> The ability to boot ones machine, have other OS''s running along
side each other,
> interact with them on a modern laptop that has the space and RAM to
> accomodate it. switch back and forth between your environments with ease.
>
> I wish I could put my development skills to use on something interesting
and awesome.
>
> Jason