[sllug-members]: Xen Question

[Thomas S Hatch]

Thanks Lamont, that helps a ton, you really know your stuff!

On 6/17/07, Lamont Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 17 June 2007 08:15am, Thomas S Hatch wrote:
> > Wow, I don't think I have pae, I have a Pentium M, here are my flags (and
> > no pae flag!)
>
> It probably doesn't have PAE.  Many people will tell you that every Intel
> processor since the Pentium Pro comes with PAE.  While it's true that it's
> *available* in every Intel processor family, not all chips actually get it.
> Most notably, almost all notbook destined Intel processors do not have it
> and
> it seems that some desktop chips are missing PAR, too.  Only the Xeon chips
> all have PAR, AFAIK.
>
> > I think it might be time for new hardware!
>
> Or use another distro as the base.  SUSE provides both PAE  an non-PAE Xen
> kernels.  Another choice is to construct your own Xen kernels (in which
> case,
> I would *highly* recommend using the distro's kernel SRPM and "fixing" it
> up).  This can be kinda tough to do for Fedora/RHEL due to the shoehorning
> they've gone through to get a working Xen kernelal at all.
>
> About a year ago, there was a lengthy discussion on the Fedora Developer
> and/or Fedora Xen lists (don't recall which, ATM) about making all future
> Fedora Xen kernels require PAE.  The main reason this was proposed (as I
> recall) was so that they could reduce the number of binary kernel packages
> to
> ship and maintain by 1 more (they also had and were cutting out other kernel
> packages at that time for that reason, "streamlining").  There were a large
> number of people on that thread opposed to it, as even the developers and
> sys
> admins who were working with Xen wanted it to work on their notebooks, but
> the kernel packagers won out and the rest, as they say, is history.
>
> > flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat
> > clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe up est tm2
>
> My notebook also mentions the "ht" flag, for example and it definately
> doesn't
> have hyperthreading.
>
> > Thanks, I will get this blasted Xen working sometime!
>
> You're best bets are:
>
> 1.  Use SUSE (or another distro who understands the value and need of
> providing non-PAE kernels).
> 2.  Build your own kernels.
> 3.  Get a different piece of hardware, preferably 64-bit (you can run an
> entirely 32-bit userspace with a 64-bit kernel if you absolutely must do
> so).
> 4.  Both 1 & 3 :) .
>
> [snip]
> --
> Lamont Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com>
> Senior Instructor
> Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
>
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