Mailing List Archive

Stewart,

the Xen live CD runs the guest OSs with GUI. To me that means: It is
definiteley possible.

I haven't been able to start the GUI on my DomUs up til now. As far as I
could figure out, the live CD DomUs run a VNC server to which the Dom0
connects to.

I spent some hours connecting the DomU to a Dom0-X-server (according to my
opinion this should also be feasible) but it failed on some
X-authorization-stuff... The DomU received a rejection from the
Dom0-X-server. In other words, the communication seemed to work but the
authorizations were not set properly.

This might not be exactly what you wanted to know... all I can say is that
X/Gnome/KDE is possible - and I also would be pleased if somebody could
name a HOWTO or anything else which could help here.

Thanks!

Cz.

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 09:31:12 +0200, Stewart Outram
<stewart@soutram.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I appreciate that this is a very basic question ....
>
> I have installed Xen and managed to create a few Domains running Debian
> and Gentoo. In both cases I then attempted to create a Desktop
> environment by installing X but hit some problems.
>
> Searching through the archives it seems that an X environment is not yet
> supported within a Domain, and hence I guess the setting up of
> Gnome/KDE ?
>
> If this is the case are people currently using the Domains purely as
> command line interfaces?
>
> Looking at the various images there seemed to be a Desktop environment
> supported in some way.
>
> Stewart
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users



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> I haven't been able to start the GUI on my DomUs up til now. As far as I
> could figure out, the live CD DomUs run a VNC server to which the Dom0
> connects to.

Yep. The demo CD runs "vncserver" automatically in a domain, which creates a
virtual X display you can connect to using VNC.

> I spent some hours connecting the DomU to a Dom0-X-server (according to my
> opinion this should also be feasible) but it failed on some
> X-authorization-stuff... The DomU received a rejection from the
> Dom0-X-server. In other words, the communication seemed to work but the
> authorizations were not set properly.

Have you tried using SSH with X forwarding? Just SSH to a domain using "ssh
-X domain", then run an X application. It should appear in a window, just
like it would if you were SSH-ing to a real machine.

> This might not be exactly what you wanted to know... all I can say is that
> X/Gnome/KDE is possible - and I also would be pleased if somebody could
> name a HOWTO or anything else which could help here.

VNC, Xnest and FreeNX are also good things to look at. SSH with X forwarding
is probably the simplest.

Cheers,
Mark

>
> Thanks!
>
> Cz.
>
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 09:31:12 +0200, Stewart Outram
>
> <stewart@soutram.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I appreciate that this is a very basic question ....
> >
> > I have installed Xen and managed to create a few Domains running Debian
> > and Gentoo. In both cases I then attempted to create a Desktop
> > environment by installing X but hit some problems.
> >
> > Searching through the archives it seems that an X environment is not yet
> > supported within a Domain, and hence I guess the setting up of
> > Gnome/KDE ?
> >
> > If this is the case are people currently using the Domains purely as
> > command line interfaces?
> >
> > Looking at the various images there seemed to be a Desktop environment
> > supported in some way.
> >
> > Stewart
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xen-users mailing list
> > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

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On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 10:21:48AM +0200, Czerwinski wrote:
> This might not be exactly what you wanted to know... all I can say is that
> X/Gnome/KDE is possible - and I also would be pleased if somebody could
> name a HOWTO or anything else which could help here.
>

Sidequestion: You can actually tell xen to make certain cards (basing on
their pci addresses) to not be seen by dom0. Thus they can be used *by one*
(am I right?) domU. So what if I don't show dom0 the video-card?
Depending on the dom0-OS, it may even work that dom0 can still show up stuff
(totally unsure, I am have not yet begun reading VGA-specs or alike ;-) )
however, just a sitenote.

I actually started to setup my Xen-puter with two VGA-cards, so that'd be
another possibility basing on the above assumption(s).



But now that is all a bit hackish, it would be interesting to see a real
hardware-API here; virtual-soundcards, virtual video-devices, and so on
and so forth.

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> Sidequestion: You can actually tell xen to make certain cards (basing on
> their pci addresses) to not be seen by dom0. Thus they can be used *by one*
> (am I right?) domU. So what if I don't show dom0 the video-card?

That might work. I can say I've ever tried booting Linux without a video
card, though.

> Depending on the dom0-OS, it may even work that dom0 can still show up
> stuff (totally unsure, I am have not yet begun reading VGA-specs or alike
> ;-) ) however, just a sitenote.

Probably depends on the version of Xen too - I think Xen 3.0 is a bit stricter
about IO privileges.

> I actually started to setup my Xen-puter with two VGA-cards, so that'd be
> another possibility basing on the above assumption(s).

A few people have been trying to get a second graphics card (and USB keyboard,
mouse) running in a second domain. They haven't managed it (AFAIK - please
let us know if you have) yet but hopefully they'll get it working some time.
It's certainly something we'd like to see.

> But now that is all a bit hackish, it would be interesting to see a real
> hardware-API here; virtual-soundcards, virtual video-devices, and so on
> and so forth.

With Intel's LaGrande security tech (AMD have a similar thing but I can't
remember the name) we'll be able to regulate things much better so that we
don't have to trust domains with direct hardware access. We'll be able t
control where they may DMA to, etc. This also implies most fault-resistant
driver domains will be possible.

Cheers,
Mark

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