Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:14:09 +0400 (GST) From: "Rakhesh Sasidharan" <rakhesh@rakhesh.com> To: "Michael Grant" <mg-fbsd3@grant.org> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: XEN questions Message-ID: <44964.212.72.24.148.1185772449.squirrel@rakhesh.com> In-Reply-To: <62b856460707290755s1225eaffy951caa9c81857de3@mail.gmail.com> References: <62b856460707290755s1225eaffy951caa9c81857de3@mail.gmail.com>
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> Does one run XEN inside of freebsd and then VMs inside that, or does > one run XEN on the bare hardware and then run freebsd inside that? If > I've already got freebsd running on my box, do I have to reload it > from scratch or is there a way I can virtualize what I already have > runing? Hi, Xen runs on the bare hardware and other OSes run atop Xen (i.e. they are specifically "ported" to the Xen "hardware"). But you don't have to install Xen on the bare hardware as such. Typically you install Xen on your OS. And then you install other OSes on this Xen installation. That's how it works. For example: Say you are running FreeBSD 7.0. You install Xen on FreeBSD 7.0. Then you install FreeBSD 6.2 and NetBSD 3.1 onto Xen. In Xen terminology, all these OS installations (including the FreeBSD 7.0 on which Xen is installed) are called "domains". The FreeBSD 7.0 Xen domain is called dom0 (domain 0). While the FreeBSD 6.2 and NetBSD 3.1 Xen domains are called domU (domain User). dom0 is special coz that's what manages the other domains. Plus, that's where you install Xen first for it to interact with the hardware etc. Not all OSes support Xen on dom0. FreeBSD 6.2, for instance, doesn't. (It only supports domU). FreeBSD 7.0 would, I believe. NetBSD 3.1 does. In Linux, you need kernel 2.6.18 and greater I think. So to answer your question, if you are on FreeBSD 6.2, you can't try out Xen. You can, however, install FreeBSD 6.2 atop any Xen installation running on FreeBSD 7.0 and Linux or NetBSD 3.1 etc. Hope this helps. :) Regards, Rakhesh ps. This should be of some info -- http://tx.downloads.xensource.com/downloads/docs/user/#SECTION01140000000000000000.
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