Mailing List Archive: KXen preview now available

KXen preview now available

christian.limpach at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 4:28 PM

Post #1 of 16 (52 views)

The initial public release of the Hosted Xen project (KXen) is now
available. KXen lets you run the Xen core as a Type-2 VMM, on top of
a regular operating system. This release supports 32-bit Windows XP,
Vista and Win7 as the host operating system. This release uses a
snapshot of the Xen core used in Citrix's XenServer product. Future
releases will be based on open source xen-3.4 and xen-unstable. This
release is in the form of a snapshot of the latest working sources
(kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2) and an archive of binaries built
from those sources (kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip).

Xen is the leading open source Type-1 VMM, providing a fast, robust
and secure virtualization platform. KXen leverages the Xen
technology, extending the range of environments in which the same core
engine can be used to existing desktops, laptops and allowing
scenarios like run from usb stick.

Work is underway to support MacOSX as the host, as well as 64-bit
versions of Windows. The windows 32-bit host code is designed such
that it is easy to port to other host operating systems.

URLs:
http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2
http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip

Please note that there are known issues with this preview which can
result in a host lockup or crash!

Please send questions and comments to xen-devel.

Christian Limpach
Peter Johnston
Xen.org and Citrix Systems, Inc.

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 5:49 PM

Post #2 of 16 (52 views)

This is exciting!

Some quick questions: how much code is shared between Xen and KXen?
And how Xen and KXen code are parallel maintained in the future?

Thanks,
Jun

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Christian Limpach
<christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
> The initial public release of the Hosted Xen project (KXen) is now
> available. KXen lets you run the Xen core as a Type-2 VMM, on top of
> a regular operating system. This release supports 32-bit Windows XP,
> Vista and Win7 as the host operating system. This release uses a
> snapshot of the Xen core used in Citrix's XenServer product. Future
> releases will be based on open source xen-3.4 and xen-unstable. This
> release is in the form of a snapshot of the latest working sources
> (kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2) and an archive of binaries built
> from those sources (kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip).
>
> Xen is the leading open source Type-1 VMM, providing a fast, robust
> and secure virtualization platform. KXen leverages the Xen
> technology, extending the range of environments in which the same core
> engine can be used to existing desktops, laptops and allowing
> scenarios like run from usb stick.
>
> Work is underway to support MacOSX as the host, as well as 64-bit
> versions of Windows. The windows 32-bit host code is designed such
> that it is easy to port to other host operating systems.
>
> URLs:
> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2
> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip
>
> Please note that there are known issues with this preview which can
> result in a host lockup or crash!
>
> Please send questions and comments to xen-devel.
>
> Christian Limpach
> Peter Johnston
> Xen.org and Citrix Systems, Inc.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 5:54 PM

Post #3 of 16 (52 views)

Another question: do we still maintain the same low level API
(libxenctrl, libxenstore,...) in KXen?

Thanks,
J

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is exciting!
>
> Some quick questions: how much code is shared between Xen and KXen?
> And how Xen and KXen code are parallel maintained in the future?
>
> Thanks,
> Jun
>
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Christian Limpach
> <christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The initial public release of the Hosted Xen project (KXen) is now
>> available. KXen lets you run the Xen core as a Type-2 VMM, on top of
>> a regular operating system. This release supports 32-bit Windows XP,
>> Vista and Win7 as the host operating system. This release uses a
>> snapshot of the Xen core used in Citrix's XenServer product. Future
>> releases will be based on open source xen-3.4 and xen-unstable. This
>> release is in the form of a snapshot of the latest working sources
>> (kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2) and an archive of binaries built
>> from those sources (kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip).
>>
>> Xen is the leading open source Type-1 VMM, providing a fast, robust
>> and secure virtualization platform. KXen leverages the Xen
>> technology, extending the range of environments in which the same core
>> engine can be used to existing desktops, laptops and allowing
>> scenarios like run from usb stick.
>>
>> Work is underway to support MacOSX as the host, as well as 64-bit
>> versions of Windows. The windows 32-bit host code is designed such
>> that it is easy to port to other host operating systems.
>>
>> URLs:
>> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2
>> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip
>>
>> Please note that there are known issues with this preview which can
>> result in a host lockup or crash!
>>
>> Please send questions and comments to xen-devel.
>>
>> Christian Limpach
>> Peter Johnston
>> Xen.org and Citrix Systems, Inc.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Xen-devel mailing list
>> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
>> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>>
>

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 6:27 PM

Post #4 of 16 (52 views)

One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?

The README is not so clear, hence my questions.

Thanks,
J

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another question: do we still maintain the same low level API
> (libxenctrl, libxenstore,...) in KXen?
>
> Thanks,
> J
>
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is exciting!
>>
>> Some quick questions: how much code is shared between Xen and KXen?
>> And how Xen and KXen code are parallel maintained in the future?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jun
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Christian Limpach
>> <christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The initial public release of the Hosted Xen project (KXen) is now
>>> available. KXen lets you run the Xen core as a Type-2 VMM, on top of
>>> a regular operating system. This release supports 32-bit Windows XP,
>>> Vista and Win7 as the host operating system. This release uses a
>>> snapshot of the Xen core used in Citrix's XenServer product. Future
>>> releases will be based on open source xen-3.4 and xen-unstable. This
>>> release is in the form of a snapshot of the latest working sources
>>> (kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2) and an archive of binaries built
>>> from those sources (kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip).
>>>
>>> Xen is the leading open source Type-1 VMM, providing a fast, robust
>>> and secure virtualization platform. KXen leverages the Xen
>>> technology, extending the range of environments in which the same core
>>> engine can be used to existing desktops, laptops and allowing
>>> scenarios like run from usb stick.
>>>
>>> Work is underway to support MacOSX as the host, as well as 64-bit
>>> versions of Windows. The windows 32-bit host code is designed such
>>> that it is easy to port to other host operating systems.
>>>
>>> URLs:
>>> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2
>>> http://www.xen.org/download/HostedXen/snapshots/kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip
>>>
>>> Please note that there are known issues with this preview which can
>>> result in a host lockup or crash!
>>>
>>> Please send questions and comments to xen-devel.
>>>
>>> Christian Limpach
>>> Peter Johnston
>>> Xen.org and Citrix Systems, Inc.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Xen-devel mailing list
>>> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
>>> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>>>
>>
>

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 6:57 PM

Post #5 of 16 (52 views)

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is exciting!
>
> Some quick questions: how much code is shared between Xen and KXen?
> And how Xen and KXen code are parallel maintained in the future?

KXen currently uses about 300 of the 1100 files in Xen (xen
subdirectory). Most of the changes add #ifndef __KXEN__ to comment
out code which is not required, in most cases this is not even
necessary except to prevent having to pull in even more unused Xen
code.

Once there's a Xen 3.4 branch, we'll move over to using that and then
we'll also start to push changes into xen-unstable.

christian

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:00 PM

Post #6 of 16 (52 views)

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another question: do we still maintain the same low level API
> (libxenctrl, libxenstore,...) in KXen?

Not currently, but eventually. KXen has a very minimal set of the
xenctrl/xenguest libraries, directly built into its version of ioemu.
This is just enough to build an hvm domain. We'll aim to switch to a
more complete libxenctrl/libxenguest. Currently there's no xenstore,
but we'll add that once we work on PV driver support.

christian

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:04 PM

Post #7 of 16 (52 views)

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?

It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
of that so far. No plans to add support for systems which don't have
hardware virtualization.

christian

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

neojia at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:05 PM

Post #8 of 16 (52 views)

Do you have VT-d support in KXen?

Thanks,
Neo

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Christian Limpach
<christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
>> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
>> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?
>
> It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
> of that so far. No plans to add support for systems which don't have
> hardware virtualization.
>
> christian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>

--
I would remember that if researchers were not ambitious
probably today we haven't the technology we are using!

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:24 PM

Post #9 of 16 (52 views)

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Neo Jia <neojia@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you have VT-d support in KXen?
>

I am sure that the answer will be: not now, but yes, eventually :-)

Thanks,
J

> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Christian Limpach
> <christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
>>> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
>>> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?
>>
>> It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
>> of that so far. No plans to add support for systems which don't have
>> hardware virtualization.
>>
>> christian
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Xen-devel mailing list
>> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
>> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>>
>
>
>
> --
> I would remember that if researchers were not ambitious
> probably today we haven't the technology we are using!
>

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:25 PM

Post #10 of 16 (52 views)

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Christian Limpach
<christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
>> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
>> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?
>
> It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
> of that so far.

So only Intel hardware is supported now?

I see some SVM code in the source, but it is not activated yet?

Thanks,
J

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 7:31 PM

Post #11 of 16 (52 views)

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Christian Limpach
> <christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
>>> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
>>> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?
>>
>> It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
>> of that so far.
>
> So only Intel hardware is supported now?

Correct. Should be fairly straightforward to add the svm code and
make corresponding changes, seems easier to do this once later rather
than having to change two places all the time...

> I see some SVM code in the source, but it is not activated yet?

Yeah, code which is in common files is there but the svm directory
corresponding to the vmx directory is missing.

christian

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Mar 31, 2009, 11:34 PM

Post #12 of 16 (52 views)

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Christian Limpach
<christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Christian Limpach
>> <christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> One more question: is it true that this requires virtualization
>>>> hardware (VT-X/Pacifica)? Or it can also do binary translation (using
>>>> Qemu), so it can even work with very old hardware?
>>>
>>> It requires hardware virtualization and we've only added the vmx side
>>> of that so far.
>>
>> So only Intel hardware is supported now?
>
> Correct. Should be fairly straightforward to add the svm code and
> make corresponding changes, seems easier to do this once later rather
> than having to change two places all the time...
>
>> I see some SVM code in the source, but it is not activated yet?
>
> Yeah, code which is in common files is there but the svm directory
> corresponding to the vmx directory is missing.

Another question: what is the plan for Linux support for KXen? Will
that target Linux upstream and use virtops?

Thanks,
J

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Apr 1, 2009, 12:37 AM

Post #13 of 16 (52 views)

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another question: what is the plan for Linux support for KXen? Will
> that target Linux upstream and use virtops?

No immediate plans. HVM Linux works as is (with non-PAE kernel). PV
Linux expects to have most of a 4G virtual address space available,
which, on a 32-bit host, is not immediately reconcilable with having
Windows use 2G for its kernel. I think being able to run small Linux
service VMs might be useful, and that could maybe be done by running
with 1.5G user space and .5G kernel space. On a 64-bit host, things
should be very much straightforward...

christian

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

junkoi2004 at gmail

Apr 1, 2009, 1:00 AM

Post #14 of 16 (52 views)

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Christian Limpach
<christian.limpach@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Another question: what is the plan for Linux support for KXen? Will
>> that target Linux upstream and use virtops?
>
> No immediate plans. HVM Linux works as is (with non-PAE kernel). PV
> Linux expects to have most of a 4G virtual address space available,
> which, on a 32-bit host, is not immediately reconcilable with having
> Windows use 2G for its kernel. I think being able to run small Linux
> service VMs might be useful, and that could maybe be done by running
> with 1.5G user space and .5G kernel space. On a 64-bit host, things
> should be very much straightforward...
>

Sorry but it seems my question is not so clear. I am asking about KXen
as the hypervisor, but not about guest support.

I should restate my question as: Currently the hypervisor for Windows
OS is available for download (as XP/Vista/7 are supported). How about
the (KXen) hypervisor for Linux? When is it available? And will that
target upstream, and use virtops? And is there any significant
difference with KVM?

I guess the answer will be "that is not ready now", but some
information about future plan would be helpful.

Thanks,
J

> christian
>

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RE: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

Ian.Pratt at eu

Apr 1, 2009, 10:43 AM

Post #15 of 16 (52 views)

> Sorry but it seems my question is not so clear. I am asking about KXen
> as the hypervisor, but not about guest support.
>
> I should restate my question as: Currently the hypervisor for Windows
> OS is available for download (as XP/Vista/7 are supported). How about
> the (KXen) hypervisor for Linux? When is it available? And will that
> target upstream, and use virtops? And is there any significant
> difference with KVM?

Porting kxen to a linux host wouldn't be hard, but it's not clear it's worth the effort: there isn't a huge installed base of linux desktops that would benefit from having a kernel module that adds type-2 virtualization capabilities, and KVM serves the hosted linux virtualization market already. I guess someone could do just to embarrass KVM for performance and features :-)

Windows and Mac OSX are the obvious host OSes to concentrate on. I think there's real value in being able to target the same xen code base to both true bare metal type-1 and type-2 hosted use cases -- it yields a lot of development efficiency and gets xen into places where deploying a type-1 might be tricky e.g. user-owned laptops with existing OS installs.

Ian

> I guess the answer will be "that is not ready now", but some
> information about future plan would be helpful.
>
> Thanks,
> J
>
>
> > christian
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

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Re: KXen preview now available [ In reply to ]

christian.limpach at gmail

Apr 1, 2009, 11:17 AM

Post #16 of 16 (52 views)

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 1:00 AM, Jun Koi <junkoi2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry but it seems my question is not so clear. I am asking about KXen
> as the hypervisor, but not about guest support.
>
> I should restate my question as: Currently the hypervisor for Windows
> OS is available for download (as XP/Vista/7 are supported). How about
> the (KXen) hypervisor for Linux? When is it available? And will that
> target upstream, and use virtops? And is there any significant
> difference with KVM?

It's open source, so anybody is welcome to add host support for Linux
or any other OS. The windows host driver code is intentionally very
portable and will be even more so once we resume work on the MacOS
version. We try to avoid host-dependent designs but of course also
want to achieve the best performance possible, so we'll probably end
up with a fairly generic base implementation of most interfaces with
some alternative implementations which are optimized for specific host
OS versions.

I don't know enough about KVM to list specific differences, the most
user visible difference is the exact specification of the virtual
hardware, which is identical between Xen and KXen, and eventually the
option to use Xen's paravirtual drivers.

christian

> I guess the answer will be "that is not ready now", but some
> information about future plan would be helpful.
>
> Thanks,
> J
>
>
>> christian
>>
>

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