Xend and Xen 4.2 / NetBSD 6.1

[Darren Spruell <phatbuckett%gmail.com@localhost>]

Greetings,

Running into some confusion regarding installed Xen services, thinking
may have to do with aging information in
https://www.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto.html.

Document notes requirement to start Xen tool daemon (xend) but is then
also framed around the use of XM for management whereas it seems XM is
deprecated by XL. If using XL for management of Xen, is Xend required
at all?

I ask because Xend does not start and the reason looks to be similar
to that discussed in
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2012/09/20/msg007634.html, that
blktap* is not available. I can see the failure in /var/run/rc.log:

...
[running /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/xencommons]
Starting xenservices: xenstored, xenconsoled.
Setting domain 0 name...
[running /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/xendomains]
Starting xen domains.
Parsing config from /usr/pkg/etc/xen/cifdev.cfg
Daemon running with PID 336
[running /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/xend]
Starting xendservices: xenbackendd, xend.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/pkg/sbin/xend", line 110, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/usr/pkg/sbin/xend", line 91, in main
    start_blktapctrl()
  File "/usr/pkg/sbin/xend", line 77, in start_blktapctrl
    start_daemon("blktapctrl", "")
  File "/usr/pkg/sbin/xend", line 74, in start_daemon
    os.execvp(daemon, (daemon,) + args)
  File "/usr/pkg/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 344, in execvp
    _execvpe(file, args)
  File "/usr/pkg/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 380, in _execvpe
    func(fullname, *argrest)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
[running /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/xen-watchdog]
Starting xenwatchdog.
...

And despite the failure in xend I can see Xen dom0 and domU operating
fine using xl:

$ sudo xl list
Name                                        ID   Mem VCPUs      State   Time(s)
Domain-0                                     0   256     1     r-----    2252.5
cifdev                                      12  3072     2     -b----     146.0

Is it the case then that xend is no longer necessary unless using XM?
And does XM generally work if Xend won't start?

Also, what is required to freshen the NetBSD/xen Howto? Shame to see
good docs go stale.

-- 
Darren Spruell
phatbuckett%gmail.com@localhost