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

[Alexander Todorov]

Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 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.

In my case it was dogtail=<url>.
This is new option to allow passing url of dogtail testcase to anaconda.
I was testing the patch that will parse kernel parameters and provide
them as command line parameters to the installer.
See:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239024
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=172891

> 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.

Having a general purpose way to specify additional kernel params is a
good thing anyway. You can not predict if somebody will need it and for
what reason (different from already implemented).

> 
>> 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. 
> 

I agree, I can correct it. This will minimize code changes as well.

Q: Will the next "hg bundle myfeature.hg" be enough for you as described
in the README?

>> 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. 
> 

Thanks for the answer.

Greetings,
Alexander.

> Regards,
> Dan.