OK, the new rig has been shipped (/me wipes sweat off brow). Hurricane Electric says they'll have the new rig installed tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've just created the First Come/First Served Public Beta registration page -- there's a link to it off the "My Account" subtab. Please register now if you're willing to enter the beta test. Note that these servers are located in Fremont. If you're on a Dallas node (hosts1-8, 27-55) and still want to participate your IP addresses will change.

https://www.linode.com/members/xenbeta.cfm

I'll make a more formal and detailed Public Beta announcement within the next few days.

-Chris

Caker, I sincerely appreciate your referance to the new server as the "new rig". Because I'm basically a Georgia redneck, I also know the correct thing to say before booting the new rig for the first time will be "let's far this mother up and see what she'll do..."

Best of luck with Xen, I'm looking forward to it.

Hal Williams

Boy howdy, I reckon that new server can really tote the mail, I tell you what! I'm sure Caker will have it loaded for bear lickety split, unless it tumps over, then it could be a real mare's nest.

I know this has been ask time and time again, but:

Does Xen, as used in the public beta testing, support NPTL?

I'm asking this because I just clicked on the register thing, and one of the things I would like to try is upgrading the Fedora image all the way to version 4 (or even 5).

As I understand it, Fedora Core 4 (and 5) are prepared to be run as a Xen guest system, and even include Xen guest kernels as part of the distribution.

My understanding is that Xen can emulate NPTL, at a 10-15% performance penalty.

I think this would mean that each Linode user can choose whether he wants it or not, so if you have applications that require it, it'll work.

This is hardly an authoritative answer, though; I'd be very interested in getting one, as would you.

Yes, it does. Xen emulates TLS/NPTL with some performance penalty. How much of one, I'm not sure, but I'd venture to guess that you'd still be way better off with Xen+NPTL than with UML (with or without NPTL).

-Chris

Thanks.

I've just migrated my Linode. Works for me[tm].

I'll soon make a local backup of the data in my Linode and reinstall /lib/tls to see what happens. Eventually I'll try the upgrade process to version 4, and post my results as I did with the upgrade to Fedora 3.