From: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>
To: Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@eu.citrix.com>
Cc: Anthony Perard <anthony.perard@citrix.com>,
Olaf Hering <olaf@aepfle.de>, Wei Liu <Wei.Liu2@citrix.com>,
"xen-devel@lists.xen.org" <xen-devel@lists.xen.org>
Subject: Re: 4.7 qemu regression: HVM guests fail to boot from xvda
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 11:13:07 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <57515833.1050003@citrix.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <22351.240.490849.992725@mariner.uk.xensource.com>
On 01/06/16 16:36, Ian Jackson wrote:
> George Dunlap writes ("Re: [Xen-devel] 4.7 qemu regression: HVM guests fail to boot from xvda"):
>> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 12:41 PM, Olaf Hering <olaf@aepfle.de> wrote:
>>> I think if some domU.cfg for xen-4.3+ has 'vdev=xvd*' and the domU uses
>>> for some reason kernel names in config files and the domU uses a
>>> xenlinux kernel, then changing domU.cfg to 'hd*' will allow the guest to
>>> boot again. But its userland will miss the /dev/xvd* device nodes.
>>> That probably remained unnoticed during testing the referenced commit if
>>> a pvops based kernel was used.
>
> Linux doctrine, at least, nowadays, is that hd* device names are not
> stable. On my own colo machine I find that on some boots the actual
> hard disks are sda and sdb and the emergency usb stick is sdc, but on
> other boots the disks are sdb and sdc and the usb stick is sda. So
> some would say that what you are doing is inherently unstable.
>
> But I don't think I really agree with that view. I think we should be
> able to do better.
>
>> Really 'vdev' string in the the guest config file is only meant to
>> tell libxl how it should behave -- it should ideally not have any
>> effect on what devices you see in the backend.
>
> The vdev specifies the virtual block number. See vbd-interface.txt.
> hda and xvda have different numbers.
>
>> And furthermore, it
>> seems to me that when Linux upstream rejected the idea of the pv
>> drivers stealing the "hd*" namespace, that SuSE's xenlinux should have
>> followed suit and had the pv drivers only create devices named xvd*.
>
> Right. This is the root cause. vbd-interface.txt is designed to cope
> with modern PV frontends which never steal the hda minor numbers.
>
> I think we should fix this with a syntax for explicitly specifying a
> pv-only device with the hd* pv block number.
Olaf,
Would this be a suitable solution for you, and do you think you
understand the suggestion well enough / have enough time to write up a
patch?
-George
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-06-03 10:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-05-30 20:42 4.7 qemu regression: HVM guests fail to boot from xvda Olaf Hering
2016-05-31 11:02 ` George Dunlap
2016-05-31 11:16 ` Olaf Hering
2016-05-31 11:32 ` George Dunlap
2016-05-31 11:41 ` Olaf Hering
2016-05-31 12:00 ` George Dunlap
2016-05-31 12:04 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-01 13:17 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-01 21:40 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-02 11:49 ` Wei Liu
2016-06-02 12:06 ` Olaf Hering
2016-05-31 12:15 ` Jan Beulich
2016-06-01 9:48 ` Wei Liu
2016-06-01 13:34 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-01 14:11 ` Wei Liu
2016-06-01 14:32 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-01 15:36 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-03 10:13 ` George Dunlap [this message]
2016-06-03 11:20 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-03 11:27 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-03 11:45 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-06 10:39 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-06 10:52 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-06 11:43 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-06 12:49 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-07 14:08 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-07 14:27 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-08 10:17 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-07 19:06 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-08 10:18 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-08 10:23 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-08 10:30 ` Ian Jackson
2016-06-08 10:49 ` George Dunlap
2016-06-08 11:13 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-08 15:56 ` Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
2016-06-03 11:50 ` Olaf Hering
2016-05-31 12:10 ` Jan Beulich
2016-05-31 13:41 ` George Dunlap
2016-05-31 14:10 ` Jan Beulich
2016-05-31 16:15 ` Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
2016-06-08 11:38 ` Wei Liu
2016-06-08 12:04 ` Olaf Hering
2016-06-08 12:09 ` Wei Liu
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