[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#608253: Release notes addition for Xen support in Debian

[Justin B Rye]

Thomas Goirand wrote:
> I don't want to point fingers here (so I wont check who's involved), but
> I've been advised to point at the wiki. Anyway, this paragraph can now
> be removed if the issue has been fixed.

I haven't seen any claim of a fix for the issue that xen users need to
upgrade manually; just a change in the approved manual procedure.

We had:

# Upgrades from Lenny will not automatically install Xen version 4.0. Instead
# you need to install Xen 4.0 and a corresponding dom0 kernel explicitly. See
# the wiki page for instructions on how to set up the Xen hypervisor and dom0
# kernel under Squeeze.

Apparently now that there are xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-* metapackages
in Squeeze this should read something like:

  Upgrades from Lenny will not automatically install Xen version 4.0.
  Instead you should manually install a xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-686 or
  xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-amd64 metapackage, which will handle the
  dependencies and should facilitate future upgrades. See the wiki page
  for configuration instructions.

My apologies if this is a clueless question, but I'll ask again: how
does this interact with the requirement in the generic upgrade
procedure for a kernel change to handle udev?  Should we be advising
people to do this xen kernel switch early or late in the upgrade?

I attach an updated d-l-eified version (this paragraph was the one
that didn't need any proofreading).
-- 
JBR	with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
	sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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<section id="xen-upgrades">
<title>Xen upgrades</title>
<para>
If you installed Xen on Lenny, the default kernel booted by
grub-legacy was the one providing a Xen hypervisor and dom0 support.
This behavior has changed with GRUB 2 in Squeeze: the non-Xen kernel
will boot per default. If you need Xen and expect to boot with it by
default, there are configuration hints at
http://wiki.debian.org/Xen#Installationandconfiguration
</para>
<para>
Upgrades from Lenny will not automatically install Xen version 4.0.
Instead you should manually install a xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-686 or
xen-linux-system-2.6-xen-amd64 metapackage, which will handle the
dependencies and should facilitate future upgrades. See the wiki page
for configuration instructions.
</para>
<para>
Squeeze's 2.6.32 Xen kernel uses pvops instead of the forward-ported
Xenlinux patch. This means that on Squeeze your domU won't be able
to use (for example) sda1 as a device name for its hard drive, since
this naming scheme is not available under pvops. Instead you should
use (as a corresponding example) xvda1, which is compatible with
both old and new Xen kernels.
</para>
</section>