Xen Maintainer, Committer and Developer Meeting/July 2012 Minutes

Attendees

• George Dunlap
• Donald D Dugger
• James Bulpin
• Jun Nakajima
• Konrad R Wilk
• Kurt Hackel
• Lars Kurth
• Olaf Hering
• Sherry Hurwitz

Review outstanding ACTION items

• Simon: Discuss IRQ's and MSIs with MSIs and get Andy Cooper talking to Jun on xen-devel

Started, but James needs to draw in Andy

• Lars: Start cleaning up Xen 4.2 feature list such that it is in good shape when we go into Xen 4.2 RC's

(OPEN)

• Konrad: How do we evolve blkback? Raise on xen-devel and set up a meeting on how to approach this problem

Not yet ready as Konrad does not yet have clarity on everything. Postpone to Xen Developer Meeting at XenSummit

• Jun: Future X32 work: Don to make a more detailed proposal on the mailing list. Also need to engage distros to gage impact.

Close, will cover this at XenSummit

• Konrad: Performance tooling: Konrad to summarize what is available on xen-devel. Lars to summarize on wiki.

See [1]

See Xen_Profiling:_oprofile_and_perf

Topics Discussed

UEFI Secure booting

• Desktops : WIN8 laptops need UEFI secure boot enabled
  • Will only boot binaries which are signed by a MS key
  • Desktop users may only have a MS key. If a Linux distro is not signed, not be able to boot
  • Can have your binaries signed by a MS key for $99
  • All Linux distros are trying to deal with this
  • Fedora : shim binary signed with MS key - fedora key - sign their own space 2 bootloader
  • Ubuntu : shim binary signed with MS key - will boot signed version of ubuntu bootloader (which will happen
  • Importance for Xen: need to make sure that Xen integrates with the bootloading mechanism for those distros
  • E.g. Xen binaries need to be signed in the same way as Fedora, for Ubuntu it will be easier, ...
• Not clear whether server hardware will have secure booting enabled
• Konrad: does this encompass guests? How far binaries need to be signed depends on "interpretation"
  • Redhat signing kernel and modules (possibly)
  • Kernel Summit discusses loading signed kernel modules
• Konrad: This may affect k-exec
  • Need to focus on EFI implementaion in upstream kernel as we do not yet have all EFI PVOPS hooks
• James: Do we have anything confirmed? Are we sure that all shipping win8 boxes will require UEFI boot? NO
• MS spec for x86 says users must be able disable secure boot and their own keys. Not true for ARM.
• George: Probably do not need to implement UEFI for guests:
  • Is Intel working on Tianocore? Jun: Yes
  • George: Cotrix integrating Tianocore into Xen 4.3
• Konrad: Are there customers who need keys passed up to guest?
• Don: There are customers who need that capability (TBOOT) - does TBOOT do EFI? TBOOT is better/orthogonal to EFI

ACTION: Konrad publish on xen-devel what is out there; Konrad can mentor the person picking. James/Sherry volunteered to investigate picking this up. Done

PVOPS & Linux Kernel Summit

Upstream community is facing issues

• New patches added and some cases PVOPS is broken
• Often catching them early: two cases where this took longer => unhappy relationship with x86 maintainer
• We will likely be required to document hooks to minimize breakage
• Discussion will be likely about pruneing and/or documenting hooks

Hybrid : possibilities of PV evolution

ACTION: Konrad prepare architecture overview for hyprid and post on xen-devel (first discuss on IRC channel) and send patch to Jun and then everybody on this list. Lars ensure that this will be covered at Xen Dev Meeting.

Xen 4.3 planning

• Had a long release cycle because we did not pre-plan what's in Xen 4.2
• So this time, we should make sure that we decide upfront what is in 4.3
• The following items are needed:
  • Who is planning to work on what item
  • What is important for YOU for the next Xen release
  • Are there any needs that are not covered (and somebody needs to step up)

ACTION: George send out an email to the list to collate input before the end of July

Xen Developer Meeting

• Space secured, 70% full

ACTION: Lars, send out reminder to xen-devel (including time-table) Done

ACTION: Lars, publish proposal agenda : put out for review and a vote, consult on IRC beforehand

ACTION items

Owner	Description	Status
James	Discuss IRQ's and MSIs with MSIs and get Andy Cooper talking to Jun on xen-devel. James needs to draw in Andy
Lars	Start cleaning up Xen 4.2 feature list such that it is in good shape when we go into Xen 4.2 RC's
Konrad	How do we evolve blkback? Raise on xen-devel and set up a meeting on how to approach this problem	Defer to face-2-face in August
Konrad	Konrad/Mukesh prepare architecture overview for hyprid and post on xen-devel (first discuss on IRC channel) and send patch to Jun and then everybody on this list. Lars ensure that this will be covered at Xen Dev Meeting.
George	George send out an email to the list to collate Xen 4.3 feature input before the end of July
Lars	Publish proposal agenda for Xen Dev Meeting: put out for review and a vote, consult on IRC beforehand