The end of paravirt_ops? [LWN.net]

The end of paravirt_ops?

Posted Sep 24, 2009 11:08 UTC (Thu) by lbt (subscriber, #29672)
Parent article: The end of paravirt_ops?

Seems an odd story...

Paraphrased:
"We have 4 well known VM services using a kernel capability but new hardware doesn't benefit from it and because 1 OSS and 1 commercial solution aren't that interested in old hardware support we expect the kernel to get rid of it and sacrifice the other 2 OSS solutions even though there may be lots of people using them."

Is there something to do with the fact that the Xen/lguest guys won't support paravirt_ops so it's stagnating (I thought the Xen people were doing a good job after an extended hiatus). Is lguest stagnant?

I don't understand why this feature would this be removed if lguest/Xen still relied on it.

(Yes, I use Xen to run VMs on an oldish (3 yr!!) server with no hw virt support.)

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The end of paravirt_ops?

Posted Sep 24, 2009 11:29 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

I belive the time frame for dropping paravirt_ops is many years, so it would seem premature to start worrying just yet. But the overall direction seems to be that more and more hardware gets good virtualization support - it seems likely that in a few years, a regular cell phone will be using virualization to allow non-trusted applications to run with decent security, much the same way the PS3 does today. At such a time, I think it's likely that paravirt_ops will not be missed by many.

The end of paravirt_ops?

Posted Sep 24, 2009 12:11 UTC (Thu) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]

it's more a case of
1) removing parvirt hooks that only these 2 used (reduces complexity and perf cost)
2) critically looking at future requests for paravirt hooks if it turns out that paravirt is only a short term solution