FreeBSD Xen Dom0 Support

Carsten Heesch ch at sysconfig.org.uk
Wed May 30 14:56:25 UTC 2012


Hi,

> I answer to this mail because it's related to the discussion in this thread. As told I have my Debian Dom0s and now I wan't to create a FreeBSD Xen PV DomU. Does I really need a HVM guest like described here: http://wiki.sysconfig.org.uk/display/howto/Xen+FreeBSD+8.2+DomU+%28PV%29+--+Step+by+Step+Howto

As that is my blog/wiki and I wrote that article: No, you don't need to. Just carry on with "Create a PV guest - Fast Track" (further down in that article).
It describes how to create an image from any other FreeBSD installation. 

That tutorial is a guide to quickly walk you through the steps and differences. It's probably not complete and certainly not the only way.


However, if you intend to run 64bit, you are restricted to HVM (use the XENHVM kernel to get better performance from the optimised device drivers for HVM). 
If you are planning on running 32bit, you can use PV.
I think that is still valid for 9.0. And mind you, PV is (or was?) also limited to about 850M memory in the DomU. 


> I already downloaded the prepared DomU Image but it's version 8.2 and not 8.3 or 9.0 so could I simply upgrade the guest to 8.3 for example?

The image which I put together there? It's not up to date. You can update it, but make sure to compile the kernel appropriately. The Generic kernel will not offer any PV or HVM support.
Give it a go. The beauty of virtualisation is that you can quickly roll back if you break it :)  


Cheers
C.



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