Debian Xen 2.0 Packages
From OptionC
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General Information
You may well be wondering which version of the packages to use. In additional to the ones posted here, there are several others.
- Official Xen/Debian packages (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/xen) (2.0.6 as of this posting, 2005-10-24)
- http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/DebianPackageMaintenance and http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/DebianSarge often list current information about alternative packages
- here's a link I haven't explored yet (http://packages.debianbase.de/unstable/i386/xen-unstable/)
- clarkson sources, which I'll post when their site is back
In general, if you are using any verion of Xen prior to 2.06, you will have a hard time getting help on the lists.
We have found 2.0.6, 2.0.7 and 2.0-testing to be stable in most ways, but as 2.0.7 was not a critical upgrade, we can't recommend going to it if you have 2.0.6 running well. However, when 2.0.8 is released, which should be the near "final" release for the 2.0 branch, it should be worth the upgrade, as 2.0-testing with the 2.6.12 appears to be the most stable version of 2.0.x to date
Apologies and such
We originally made our 2.0.6 debs available to try to help out since the 2.05 -> 2.0.6 upgrade was considered critical. When 2.0.7 was released, there were already official 2.0.6 packages available. We had every intention of making 2.0.7 the current version at that point, however, then I stumbled upon a few issues...
- upgrading Xen is not like upgrading other things, even the kernel; your domUs will be shut down, and you cannot restart them until a reboot (at least, that's what it seemed from the lists)
- people seemed to be using our packages, including adding it to the /etc/apt/sources.list, so any change would be pulled down on "apt-get upgrade"
As such, I dithered tremendously; as more time passed, more people were using these packages. Not a landslide, but enough to keep me up at night. As such, I decided: we'll let 2.0.7 go to the wayside, and when 2.0.8 is released and we have tested it, we'll push that into "unstable," which is where we keep these things.
Kernel Configurations
This became quite a thing for me, but having limited hardware I could never resolve it. My goal was to have three versions of the kernel:
- base version, equivelant to the default dom0, in-so-far as it was allowed in Debian
- functional version, including additional modules that had gone through enough testing to be considered stable
- kitchen sink version, which was everything (primarily build as modules), as long as I could get it to compile and boot (somethign like a base Debian kernel, but in practice much more wildly unstable)
In the end, lack of testers stopped me from pushing these, as I wasn't confortable with "works for me" in this circumstance, although I do maintain these three kernels for personal use. If anybody is interested, by all means ask.
Specific versions
Recommended Reading
- xen lists (http://lists.xensource.com)
