On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Raimundo Santos <rait...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21 February 2015 at 10:31, Markus Kolb <open...@tower-net.de> wrote:
> >
> > there isn't any support for Xen PV DomU in OpenBSD, isn't it?
>
> No, there is not such support.
>
> But you can run it in HVM mode without effort. Well, may be some effort in
> XenServer, where there is no easy way to chose the type of emulated
> hardware.
>
That's rather stupid, but apparently true[1].
I've only used Xen on Linux hosts (primarily SUSE) where it's easy to edit
the VM config files. I did have to use model=e1000 for OpenBSD, as the
rtl8139 (re0 on openbsd) didn't work properly; I just now tested
model=virtio and that seems to work too, showing up as vio0. I also have
to use bsd.sp as bsd.mp crashes on boot.
Another "problem" when using Xen: the shutdown. Every OS that can not
> communicate with xenstore will suffer from that. You will have to edit some
> scripts in your environment to make it work with ACPI.
>
Thanks for the info. I hadn't run into this since on Xen I mostly run PV
Linux guests, with the occasional HVM guest w/PV drivers (Linux, FreeBSD,
Windows), and my OpenBSD usage has mostly been on physical hardware, but it
bears noting:
On HVM guests without PV drivers, 'xm shutdown <vm>' will instantly kill
the VM, without syncing, and similarly, 'xm reboot <vm>' will instantly
reset it. The newer 'xl' tool is more graceful and will refuse an 'xl
{shutdown, reboot}' when there isn't guest PV support (you can still 'xl
destroy', of course, or 'xl {shutdown, reboot} -F <vm>' to send an ACPI
power button/reset button event).
To trigger an orderly shutdown on an OpenBSD guest, send an ACPI power
button event:
xm trigger <vm> power
I discovered this solution via [2].
Also, when a serial console is configured on the OpenBSD guest, it shows up
on the 'xm console'/virt-manager "Serial 1" view, which is nice, since you
can copy/paste from that, unlike the emulated VGA console. This apparently
requires 'serial=pty' in the VM config, but that's already the default in
my setup.
-Andrew
[1]
http://www.netservers.co.uk/articles/open-source-howtos/citrix_e1000_gigabit
[2] https://github.com/ClusterLabs/resource-agents/commit/306dccb
