Subject: Re: Running Xen on mini/i386 ?
To: None <joel@carnat.net>
From: Johan Ihren <johani@johani.org>
List: port-xen
Date: 07/20/2007 14:46:40
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>>> any feedback on using Xen on an Intel Mac Mini ?
>>> especially on the following points :
>>> - with a recent OPF, does it boot straight away, without  
>>> bootcamp ? I read
>>> that on /i386 but as Xen boots using Grub, there may be  
>>> differences ?
>>
>> I'm also very interested in this. In  
>> <20070311174938.GA19935@panix.com>
>> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote that
>>
>>> Again, no.  The latest EFI firmware for the Mini will launch a  
>>> traditional
>>> PC BIOS and boot from an MBR partition if it sees no GPT  
>>> partition table
>>> on the disk.  But you must have the latest firmware.
>
> that's the thread I refered too.
>
>> This sounds like it ought to be possible to boot via grub from the  
>> PC BIOS
>> and that way get the Dom0 running as usual. But has anyone actually
>> suceeded with this?
>
> yes, sounds like on apple's site too:
> http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macminiefifirmwareupdate11.html

And then there is a grub rewrite called grub2, which either has or  
will have EFI support. No idea about the status of the version in  
pkgsrc/wip/grub2 though. grub2 does boot Xen/Linux and is apparently  
sufficiently stable for Debian to debate migrating from grub to grub2  
as installation default.

But like you I'm a bit leery of buying hardware that I don't know  
whether it will boot.

Johan

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