Options to use winxp and netbsd together with xen

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

Please comment / advise on following requirement and what is the best way
to meet it:

Hardware: Laptop, amd64, 4 core, 4GB for day to day personal +
professional use

Requirement: Primary usage OS should be NetBSD. A certain use case at work
requires use of Windows XP based proprietary software that has to talk
with a certain USB device.

Current setup: Linux as main OS and WinXP as a Virtualbox guest.

Why change: 1. The setup is largely satisfactory, but occasionally printer
under cups settings on Linux mysteriously disappear requiring
reconfiguration from scratch. NetBSD setup without use of any intermediate
daemon would be more stable. 2. Would also like to try Xen in place of
VirtualBox. 3.  Generally, would prefer NetBSD for most of the use cases.
Reasoning would be lengthy for this post.


Constraints: The license of proprietary software on WinXP is node locked.
Getting a new license is costly.


Option 1: NetBSD Dom0, WinXP DomU

Cons 1: Restricted to single cpu on primary usage OS. But can live with
it. Can possibly use NetBSD as DomU as well. But see the point below which
is right now the main constraint.

Cons 2: Converting the VirtualBox vdi disk to "raw" and using it as DomU
disk hasn't worked. It just leads to "blue screen of death". (A fresh
installation of WinXP works, but my constraint is to carry the node locked
software as explained above.)

If there is a reliable way to port the vdi disk to xen, would stick to
this option as the remaining ones below involve at least one more OS to
break the jinx.


Option 2: NetBSD Dom0, Linux/FreeBSD DomU with VirtualBox based WinXP on
top of it

Cons: Might work, but not sure whether multiple layers of virutalization
(WinXP on VirtualBox on DomU on Xen) is a good idea for stability and
performance.


Option 3: Linux/FreeBSD Dom0, NetBSD, WinXP DomUs

As both Linux and FreeBSD have Dom0 ability as well as they both have
VirtualBox, hope to run existing WinXP DomU over them solving the
licensing issue. Will also get to use up to 3 cores for each of the DomUs.

Cons 1: Booting Dom0 and booting DomU again to reach simple use case like
checking mail does not sound very appealing.

Cons 2: Have to deal with total 3 OSes with nuances of each.


Option 4: Virtualbox on NetBSD over Linux emulation layer

I do not have skills to try this.
Native Virtualbox on NetBSD - not sure when.


Thanks for bearing with a lengthy question. Looking forward to your advice
please.

Mayuresh