Re: drop xen4.8 ?

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Wed, 18 Dec 2019 13:05:40 +0800
    From:        "Mathew, Cherry" <c%bow.st@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <ee5b85b5fdf6af7fd8e31532f7f3a3c97f1270fc.camel%bow.st@localhost>

  | For me, the current win for Xen is:
  | - supports older hardware (my dual core laptop x200 series)

Not sure about my hardware there - obviously (given the vintage of the
software running on it) it isn't state of the art...   whether it has
what is needed for newer software I have no idea (PC hardware is just
mysterious to me).

  | - mem ballooning

That's neither here nor there to me, my DomU's acquire their max size at
boot time, and simply sit there.

  | - acpi sleep (with linux dom0 and NetBSD PV)

And that one is irrelevant, everything is either 100% on, or only running
for as long as needed for whatever test some DomU runs, and then shutdown.

  | The no win is:
  | - no gui (no drm) (partly my fault)

Also irrelevant, the Dom0 gui is fine, and tightvnc (or something)
is good for access to the DomU's (when more than just a console is
needed).

  | - no dom0 SMP (partly my fault)

This one I agree with - if there was one thing that would inspire me
to upgrade, it would be if Dom0 SMP were to become available.

  | - no acpi sleep (not nvmm's fault - native support is broken).

Just as when it was a pro, rather than a con, that's irrelevant to me.
(I haven't even looked to see if I can make my laptop, with simple
native NetBSD) sleep - generally it is running (not sleeping) or simply
shut down (very small percentage of overall time.)

With Xen, I can get one of the xen processes into a tstile lockup
(which then prevents further accesses to anything via "xl" - but
doesn't affect operation of the Dom0 or running DomU's otherwise)
I think by using a multi-processor DomU, but I haven't done enough
experiments to really diagnose a cause yet (and as said already,
everything related that I am running is ancient).

kre