Re: Running Xen on mini/i386 ?

[Johan Ihren <johani%johani.org@localhost>]

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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@localhost>
> > 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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