pcifront (CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND=m) support in RHEL 4.5

[Manuel Arostegui Ramirez]

2007/8/9, Teo En Ming <space.time.universe at gmail.com>:
>  Dear All,
>
> The production server supports Intel Virtualization Technology. Processor is
> an Intel Xeon 1.86 GHz Quad Core. 8 GB DDR2 memory.
>
> There is also an Emulex LightPulse Fiber Channel HBA adapter.
>
> The host operating system (Dom 0) is RHEL 5 x86 with Xen Virtualization
> technology. Dom 0 kernel is 2.6.18-8.el5xen. I have recompiled the Dom 0
> kernel so that pciback (CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_BACKEND=y) is compiled statically
> into the kernel. Upon parsing the pciback.hide parameter on the Dom 0 kernel
> command line, I am able to hide a port of the fiber channel HBA card from
> Dom 0.
>
> Now, I have a RHEL 4 Update 5 x86 running as a para-virtualized guest. The
> Dom U kernel is kernel-xenU-2.6.9-55.el4. I intend to allow the PV guest to
> have direct access to a port on the HBA card. However, there are no PCIFRONT
> and LPFC kernel modules in the xenU kernel. Only BLKFRONT and NETFRONT are
> supported by default. LPFC is a kernel module for the Emulex HBA card. To
> compile these two kernel modules, I downloaded and installed
> kernel-2.6.9-55.el5.src.rpm, which is the full kernel sources (with xen
> patches) for RHEL 4.5. However, compiling pcifront and lpfc against the
> kernel sources did not succeed. CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND=m and
> CONFIG_SCSI_LPFC=m. These kernel modules do not have any dependencies. It
> appears that CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND is not supported in the
> 2.6.9-55kernel source code for RHEL
> 4.5.
>
> Due to production requirements, I have to stick to RHEL 4.5 as a guest. The
> alternative is to use the 2.6.18-8 xen kernel that shipped with RHEL 5 to
> boot the RHEL 4.5 guest. To do this, however, I have to upgrade the glibc,
> udev, initscripts, and other core packages in RHEL 4.5 guest. This makes the
> RHEL 4.5 effectively NOT a RHEL 4.5 anymore. I have to stick to production
> requirements as Symantec ESM, SCSP, Antivirus, and siteminder agent may not
> work with a newer GLIBC and kernel. Have an incompatible GLIBC may cause
> segmentation faults with certain softwares.
>

I guess you have the RH support. And my guess is also that you do not
want to play too much with production servers (I wouldn´t wanted if I
were you). You might want to use your RHEL support (since you´re using
RHEL, I assume you have it with its license) and ask RH  for a
solution