[Pkg-xen-devel] Xen status in lenny?

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 06:05:14PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > I think the first question to resolve is to establish that it *is*
> > supported...

> I think that the prudent thing for Debian to do is to continue to
> support the older kernel if that is the only way to ensure Xen support
> for the users.  I personally have a few servers running Xen that run
> stable.  If the support for Xen in a stable release is not suitable, I
> would have to consider migrating those servers to some other distro.  I
> would really hate to have to do that.

The distro used on dom0 is pretty uninteresting, given that part of the
point of having Xen-style virtualization for servers is to a) be able to run
different OSes in different guests, and b) not to run services in dom0.[1]

If the Debian security team is unwilling or unable to provide support for a
2.6.18 kernel over the lifetime of lenny, I'm happy to see us let dom0 be
Somebody Else's Problem.  I'm certainly happier with that than having us
/claim/ to support 2.6.18, have users rely on that claim, and then not be
able to deliver.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org

[1] I can sympathize with users who want to run Xen on systems for
virtualization purposes while also being able to run a full desktop
environment in dom0 where hardware is more accessible; but I think this is
probably a fairly small group of people still given the hardware
requirements, and in any case I don't think that's a use case that should
compel us to overextend ourselves.