Hi everyone! The Debian images in Google Compute Engine use the Debian cloud kernel. This has been working well for us, because it includes the VirtIO, NVMe, and gVNIC drivers that are needed for most GCE machine types. As we move forward, additional kernel features are needed to support all features of current and future machine types.
For example, we’re going to make an Intel 6300ESB watchdog device available, and that needs a driver that’s been in Linux a long time but isn’t enabled in the cloud kernel. For that one, another Debian user +1’d the request because it would benefit users of other KVM-based clouds (including private clouds). We can enumerate other examples, but many of those also require backports or a future Debian release. Recently in response to another feature request for the cloud kernel, Noah Meyerhans mentioned that, “historically the cloud kernels have specifically targeted Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure.” So we have the problem that the Debian cloud kernel supports some, but not all, of the devices our shared users need, and we’re not sure of the right way to solve that. We wondered if we should switch the images to the generic kernel, or if there’s a way we could help the cloud kernel support more clouds, or if there’s a better solution we haven’t thought of. What’s the best way to solve some of these problems? Kind regards, Andrew Jorgensen
