From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "M.A. Williamson" Subject: Re: win4lin-like porting of win98 to xen? Date: 10 Oct 2004 17:32:34 +0100 Sender: xen-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: References: <1097425028.2679.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> Reply-To: maw48@cantab.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1097425028.2679.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> Errors-To: xen-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: To: Mikhail Ramendik Cc: xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org > I have a question. If it's dumb, I apologize in advance ;) No, it's a good question. > There is one previous successful attempt to do "partial virtualization", > adapting the guest OS to increase performance. It's Win4Lin, and they > adapted win9x by installing drivers. The Win4Lin approach installs drivers for "virtual devices", like Xen does from disk and network. It also pretends to Win9x that it's somehow running on DOS and emulates the DOS syscalls Windows needs to run. The Win4Lin host kernel patch adds support for these syscalls. > So, is this possible? One could imagine some sort of minimal OS that provides enough functionality for Win9x to run on by emulating DOS-like functionality. That'd be kinda cool but the straightforward approach would be to get the Win4Lin patch to apply to XenLinux - it should be possible to do this with some work. I think somebody's trying it at the moment - there's a recent thread on this in the mailing list archives, which you may find relevant. HTH, Mark > > Yours, Mikhail Ramendik > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net > email is sponsored by: IT Product Guide on ITManagersJournal Use IT > products in your business? Tell us what you think of them. Give us Your > Opinions, Get Free ThinkGeek Gift Certificates! Click to find out more > http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/guidepromo.tmpl > _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list > Xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IT Product Guide on ITManagersJournal Use IT products in your business? Tell us what you think of them. Give us Your Opinions, Get Free ThinkGeek Gift Certificates! Click to find out more http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/guidepromo.tmpl