[Pkg-xen-devel] Several xen problems in Debian Etch

[Christian Schneider]

Hi folks,

before I flood the bug tracking system, I just want to send you a list 
of problems I encountered when using xen under Debian Etch (i386 on 
Intel Core2 Duo E6750). Shall I open a seperate bug report for each of 
the items below or are some of them features that are known to be 
missing in the xen release?

- A HVM domain does not start when using a physical disk without
  specifing the full path to the device, e.g.:
  'phy:vg0/lv5-domU-windows,hda,w' instead of
  'phy:/dev/vg0/lv5-domU-windows,hda,w'
  The first one should work according to the example in
  /usr/share/doc/xen-utils-common/examples/xmexample.hvm.gz
  There is no such problem with the "linux"-builder.

- A HVM (Windows XP) domU does not boot and the VNC server does not come
  up, in the following case: You use the nat or routing scripts AND have
  specified "type=ioemu" in the domU's vif config. (Without "type=ioemu"
  Windows cannot find a network card and using bridging it is difficult
  to filter network traffic. So there is no good workaround.)

- A "shutdown" of a HVM Windows XP domU results in a "destroy". This
  may not be a real xen, but a Windows problem, though a workaround or
  at least a warning in xen's documentation (man page, xm help, or
  something like that) would be great.

- Saving of a HVM domU does not work either:
  # xm save 5 foobar
  Error: /usr/lib/xen-3.0.3-1/bin/xc_save 17 5 0 0 0 failed
  Usage: xm save <Domain> <CheckpointFile>
  Save a domain state to restore later.

- When running "man xm" I always get these messages in less:
  /tmp/zmankxWh5l:643: warning: can't find numbered character 160
  /tmp/zmankxWh5l:651: warning: can't find numbered character 160
  /tmp/zmankxWh5l:652: warning: can't find numbered character 160
  [...]

- The documentation is absolutly incomplete. For example, a lot of
  parameters in the xmdomain.cfg man page are not mentioned (no other
  builders than "linux" mentioned, the "ip" parameter for vifs is not
  mentioned, etc.). As a second example, I did not find any hint on how
  to hide PCI devices in man pages or documentation (the documentation
  on the xen website seems to be for a newer release!?). Using a hidden
  USB hub from a HVM (Windows XP) domU did not work. There should be a
  list of features mentioning if it works with HVM or not.

- The kernel modules for all sound cards that can be emulated by xen are
  missing in the xen kernel package (at least neither I nor alsaconf can
  find them in a "linux" domU).

All in all I am a little bit disappointed because of all these bugs. The 
first two really made me crazy: it took several hours to find the 
reason for the problems.

Thanks in advance for comments.

Cheers,
Christian