On Tuesday 23 October 2007 18:22:00 ropers wrote:

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> Hi Christoph,

>

> Right now, on the OpenBSD misc mailing list, there is this discussion:

> http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archives/html/openbsd-misc/2007-10/thread

>s.html#01149 about OpenBSD/Xen.

>

> We last spoke last year, when I put your BSDtalk interview transcript

> online at http://ropersonline.com/openbsd/xen .

>

> It seems to me that most people on the misc mailing list currently are

> not very aware of your OpenBSD Xen port. Could I possibly ask you to

> participate in the discussion? I feel that you (and Theo) are the only

> guys who can provide authoritative answers on the issue.

>

> Some of the questions that I feel are unclear are:

> - Was your porting work fully completed? IIRC it was, but please clarify.

DomU support is ready. Dom0 is work in progress.

(apart from use-after-free bugs in MI buffer-cache and filesystem code,

which damages filesystem.)

Dom0 is work in progress, but is stalling on a NULL-pointer bug

in uvm_pglistalloc_simple().
This code piece in the kernel reproduces this crash:
void foo(void)

{

      struct pglist mlist;
      uvm_pglistalloc(PAGE_SIZE * 64, 0, 0xffffffff, 0, 0, &mlist, 64, 0);

}
I didn't investigate further into this, because I have put my focus

on the xen-kernel and xen-tools to compile on OpenBSD and NetBSD

out-of-the-box. To finish this task, I need some things in OpenBSD:
- aio(2) support

- POSIX ptsname()  (this is used in a python binding module)

- newer gcc version due to a structure padding bug with

  an alignment attribute hidden in a typedef (this is fixed in gcc 3.4)

  I use gcc 4.2 from the ports FYI.

- I need i386 headers and libc on OpenBSD/amd64 for 64bit builds.

  gcc -m32 defines __i386__ so it is possible to distinguish if a

   #include   must provide 32bit or 64bit integer type definitions.
Oh, a libc header cleanup is nice to have. I don't know why uvm kernel headers

should be in /usr/include/uvm/, for example.
> - Is your port still being maintained? Can it be run with OpenBSD

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> -current or 4.2?

4.1. It needs an update. Maybe some of the nasty MI bugs are gone.
> - It seems to me that your port didn't achieve wide recognition and

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> acclaim because of a lack of publicity.

I'm not a marketing guy.
> - AFAIK your OpenBSD/Xen port code hasn't found its way into the

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> official OpenBSD distribution. Is this correct?

yes.
> - Are there any reasons why your code didn't go into the official

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> OpenBSD distro? Was it lack of awareness? Have you ever talked to Theo

> and/or other central OpenBSD people?

I haven't found someone who is willing to commit the diffs.
> - Is there any hope that your port might still become part of the

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> official OpenBSD distribution?

> (Theo: Could you possibly comment as well?)

I don't know.
> I'd personally be very interested to see your port become part of the

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> official distribution, but I sadly can't code myself, so all I can do

> is ask and hope. :)

>

> Once again, thanks for your hard work. :)

You're welcome.
> Many thanks in advance and kind regards,

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> Jens Ropers