[Xen-devel] FreeBSD PVHVM call for testing

[Roger Pau Monné]

On 21/05/13 19:40, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 08:32:56PM +0200, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Recently Justin T Gibbs, Will Andrews and myself have been working on
>> improving the Xen support in FreeBSD. The main goal of this was to bring
>> full PVHVM support to FreeBSD, right now FreeBSD is only using PV
>> interfaces for disk and network interfaces when running as a HVM guest.
>> The main benefits of this changes are that Xen virtual interrupts (event
>> channels) are now delivered to the guest using a vector callback
>> injection, that is a per-cpu mechanism that allows each vCPU to have
>> different interrupts assigned, so for example network and disk
>> interrupts are delivered to different vCPUs in order to improve
>> performance. With this changes FreeBSD also uses PV timers when running
>> as an HVM guest, which should provide better time keeping and reduce the
>> virtualization overhead, since emulated timers are no longer used. PV
>> IPIs can also be used inside a HVM guest, but this will be implemented
>> later.
>>
>> Right now the code is in a state where it can be tested by users, so we
>> would like to encourage FreeBSD and Xen users to test it and provide
>> feedback.
>>
>> The code is available in the following git repository, under the branch
>> pvhvm_v5:
>>
>> http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/royger/freebsd.git;a=summary
>>
>> Also, I've created a wiki page that explains how to set up a FreeBSD
>> PVHVM for testing:
>>
>> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Testing_FreeBSD_PVHVM
> 
> I tried on my Linux box to do this:
> 
> 
> HEAD is now at 9b25356... xen-netfront: fix detach of network interfaces
> konrad at phenom:~/git/freebsd$ make kernel-toolchain && make buildkernel KERNCONF=XENHVM && make installkernel KERNCONF=XENHVM
> Makefile:123: *** missing separator.  Stop.
> 
> 
> As I thought it would compile the same way you can compile NetBSD - that is
> even on non-BSD distros. Is that not the case? Should I only do this under
> a FreeBSD guest?

I have never tried to run the FreeBSD build system under something
different than FreeBSD, also keep in mind that installkernel will place
a bunch of FreeBSD files on your Linux box if you manage to run it. The
error itself can probably be fixed by installing and using BSD make
(bmake), but anyway you need a FreeBSD HVM DomU in order to test the
kernel, so why not do the compilation on it?