[Fedora-xen] [patch] GUI for spacifying additional kernel parameters

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 02:46:44PM +0200, Alexander Todorov wrote:
> Hello list,
> I needed to use additional kernel parameters when installing a Xen 
> guest. I was testing modifications of anaconda.

Could you give an example of the kind of kernel parameters you are
needing to provide. Traditionally the most common need was for various
hardware workarounds, which shouldn't be neccessary in paravirt case.
So I'd be interested to know what you're using and thus figure out if
there is a higher level UI we could provide to accomplish the same
thing instead of kernel params.

> This patch provides a page where the user can supply any parameters that 
> should be passed to the kernel. Write the parameters as you would do it 
> on the command line for a physical machine.
> The new page is shown after settings for paravirtualized install.
> 
> Changes are in vmm-create.glade and virtManager/create.py.

If we do decide add such a UI it shouldn't be a separate page - simply
another text box below the existing kickstart URL field. 

> Q: Why there is an option to pass additional kernel parameters only for 
> paravirtualized installs? Is this possible for fully virtualized installs?

With Xen no - the way full virt works with Xen is that we run an actual
BIOS. This BIOS boots off a CDROM so there's no way to provide any kernel
parameters there. Of course the syslinux / grub screen that the BIOS
launches would let you enter kernel parameters fairly easily.

With QEMU/KVM, fullvirt can either boot off a CDROM, or directl from a
kernel+initrd pair. In the latter case we'd be able to provide kenrel
parameters in same way as Xen paravirt. We currently don't allow the
use of kernel+initrd in the UI for QEMU/KVM though because it has bugs
which cause it to hang. 

Regards,
Dan.
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