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

[Henning Sprang]

Ian Jackson wrote:
> [...]
> Arguably it is a mistake that `xm shutdown' does not fail in this
> situation.  The domain is not capable of being told to shut itself
> down, so it would be better to let the caller know.

I think it is definitely a mistake fo (upstream) Xen to handle a
shutdown as destroy, just because the expected/intended behaviour cannot
be done in HVM.

"normally", it should return with some "MethodNotImplemented - use
destroy or shutdown your system from inside" Exception.

> If you want to cleanly shut down a Windows guest without appropriate
> PV drivers (which aren't generally Freely available I think) 

There are, for example from SuSE (see a thread some while ago in this
list, I never tested them... not sure if they apply to Windows or Linux
HVM guests, or both) as GPL, and I heard, but not checked, that the same
goes for Redhat.

Not sure if they are somehow/at all usable from a Debian dom0, but I
don't see why not.

Then again, are you sure that using a PV disk/net IO driver (the primary
purpose of those is to get better performance and circumvent the need
for qemu emulation of some devices) in a HVM domU makes it possible to
send the shutdown command to the guest?

Henning