Xen 3.3 has a port of GRUB to the domU ('PV-GRUB') - by simply adding this to the kernel list, users ought to be able to use custom kernels (including, eg, Solaris or BSD) without any further changes to linode's management scripts.

See http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/archive/2008/09/13/pv-grub-and-partitions and http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/28/xen-33-feature-pv-grub/

Wow - this is waaay cool! It's definitely got my vote for getting on the Linode team's to-do list.

_________________
/ Peter

I would vote for this as well.

While I understand the security risk that PyGrub introduces, it sure is annoying not being able to use the kernel out of the distro, or having proper packages for the kernel, its headers, and devel packages.

One of the things I like about Xen (we use it heavily at my job) is the fact that the hypervisor and the guest kernel don't have to be the same, just support the same Xen API versions.

Support for grub is very useful when needing to test out a new kernel, just yum install it, reboot, let grub do the work. Problem, just select the old kernel from the list, roll back, remove the new kernel, sever back up. Almost like you are running on bare metal.

We've been experimenting with this internally, with decent results. I don't see any reason why this won't be available within the next week or so.

Stay tuned.

-Chris

ReasonsToChooseLinode++;

This is almost too good! Linode will truly rule. Looking forward to it.

_________________
/ Peter

Being able to run stock Linux kernels would be quite nice.

Still, running *BSD domUs would truly be awesome.
Even if it might involve some tinkering like when installing a custom distro.

Looking forward to it!

You won't be able to run stock kernels. They'll either need to be patched with Xen, or support pv_ops.

-Chris

When you say "patched with Xen" you mean a kernel that is built with Xen support such as the kernel-xen packages provided by various distros like Red Hat, CentOS, etc?

Also note that 32-bit kernels must use PAE. (and the 32-/64-bitness must match that of pv-grub itself...)

Makes sense. I assume that the Linode interface will allow selecting a 32-bit or a 64-bit pv-grub?

Yup.


Once I can get pv-grub 64-bit to compile, yes

-Chris

I recommend a sledge hammer, or a blow torch.

I'd love to have this feature. Is it any closer, now?

It's there on a very experimental basis - select 'z - testing' in the kernel list.

_________________
/ Peter