Re: netbsd as a non-domain0 os : init problem

[Christian Limpach <Christian.Limpach%cl.cam.ac.uk@localhost>]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 08:50:42PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 08:30:00PM +0000, Christian Limpach wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 08:44:20PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > > 
> > > In the bouyer-xen2 branch, the wd/sd identities for xbd are not supported 
> > > any
> > > more. They conflict with the read wd/sd drivers, and I don't see much 
> > > values
> > > for this in non-domain0 OSes.
> > 
> > I guess this functionality can be brought back at some point.  It's nice
> > to be able to boot the same filesystem with a xen and with an i386 kernel.
> > Not as important for domU on xen 2.0 as it used to be for dom0 on xen 1.2
> > though...
> 
> Well, you've still got it for domain 0, since it uses the real wd and
> sd drivers.  I always found it very tricky to get this to work for any
> domain but 0 under xen 1.2 anyway, unless netbooting -- and then the
> names of the disks don't matter so much.
> 
> Maybe I misunderstand?  Please correct me if so.

There are a few reasons why you might still want this, but none are
very important:
- use the regular i386 installer to install to a partition and then
  boot this partition as a domU
- boot a patition you usually use as a domU with a regular i386 kernel
- user confusion -- what's this xbd now?

I guess this never worked quite right on NetBSD anyway, on Linux we
can make the virtual block devices appear as a random single partition
while on NetBSD it would always appear as the first disk of a given
type.  Maybe with wedges, there will be an interface to make a
(partition of a) block device appear as a random single partition with
a wd/sd major...

    christian