[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#808624: Bug#808624: Invalid argument while starting daemon

[Ian Campbell]

Control: merge 369042 808624

On Mon, 2015-12-21 at 16:31 +0100, Giuseppe Sacco wrote:
> Package: xen-hypervisor-4.4-amd64
> Version: 4.4.1-9+deb8u3
> Severity: important
> 
> I just upgraded a machine used for hosting a few VM with Xen. The
> machine was running debian squeeze, so I updated to wheezy and then
> jessie. Xen is now version 4.4, cpu is 64 bits, dom0 is 32 bits
> userland with 64 bits kernel 3.16.0-4-amd64.

Unfortunately this is not a combination supported by Xen. Supported options
are:

    64-bit Xen, 64-bit dom0 kernel, 64-bit dom0 userspace
    64-bit Xen, 32-bit dom0 kernel, 32-bit dom0 userspace

You are using:

    64-bit Xen, 64-bit dom0 kernel, 32-bit dom0 userspace

which causes...

> dic 21 15:29:04 centrum xen[28167]: Starting Xen daemons: xenstored
> xenconsoled init-dom0FATAL: Failed to initialize dom0 state:
> Inappropriate ioctl for device

.... xenstored not to start, which in turn causes ...
> 
> and this xenstore-write command that take forever is the reason for
> systemd setting the status as "timeout".

... xenstore-write to hang trying to talk to the daemon.

Therefore this is the same issue as #369042 (therefore merging).

With this being unsupported upstream your options within Debian are either
to switch to a 32-bit dom0 kernel (easiest) or to cross-grade your
userspace to 64-bit (harder).

Outside of Debian I'm not sure what fixes would be required to make this
work upstream but I suppose you could try (by far the hardest option, not
on the roadmap upstream AFAIK)

Ian.