Re: upgrading my dom0 box (again?) - foolish?

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 01:14:33PM -0700, Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> 
> On 10/24/25 12:22, Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> > 
> > This is very helpful.  As I've been digging back in, luckily a lot of
> > this is becoming familiar again.  :)   I've so
> > 
> > far managed to at least remember how /boot.cfg and all that fits in, and
> > I've done a from-scratch reboot just
> > 
> > to make sure it all comes back as expected - thus far, no problems, so
> > I'll follow your suggestion and try
> > 
> > Xen 4.18 next!
> > 
> 
> OK, some successes and some failures.  First, as you noted, I needed a 9.4
> kernel in order to boot Xen 4.18 - the Xen kernel crashed under 9.2.
> 
> 
> Without installing the newer xentools418 package, however, I can't launch
> any domUs (xl fails noisily).  I'm
> 
> hesitant to install it, though, because I will have to uninstall xentools411
> since they install to the same

Yes xentools have to match xenkernel

> 
> locations - and then I'm stuck if there are any problems.  One of the
> problems I foresee is that it looks as if
> 
> PAE guest support is removed in 4.18; it is claimed that I should be able to
> run my PAE guest with "pvshim", but
> 
> when I follow the suggestion here:
> 
> https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Run_PV_in_PVH_container
> 
> (the suggestion being, 'add type="pvh" and pvshim=1 to the domU config'),
> the domU does not run successfully under Xen 4.11 (which I think it *should*
> since 4.11 appears to support this according to that webpage).

I'm not sure pvshim support was present in 4.11; or if the
NetBSD package did install it.

> 
> ...the domU crashes repeatedly (I'll paste the console message below).

with xl create -c, you should see the pvshim messages before
the NetBSD kernel boot.

One thing to make sure is if you can start hvm domUs, or pvh;
netbsd-10 does support pvh boot. I'm seen some CPUs that claim HVM
support but can't run pvh.

No need to do a full install; just start a domU with pvh and
a netbsd-GENERIC kernel as guest kernel:

type="pvh"
kernel = "/usr/pkg/etc/xen/kernels/netbsd10-GENERIC.gz"
memory = 1024

should be enough

I don't remember but it's quite possible that pvshim isn't functional in
4.11; it's quite old.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--