October 2008 Archives

Working more on troubleshooting, which is, as you might gather, an enormous chapter.  I'm not saying that Xen doesn't work -- I'm just saying that you have to define 'work' carefully.

Anyway.  Not that I am bothered.  It's a lovely day.

Really, right now we're thinking about adding a bit on the vm.overcommit_memory and overcommit_ratio sysctls, and how they can be used to improve Xen's stability.  The idea is that, if we make it impossible for the VM subsystem to overcommit memory, the oom-killer should never run.  This will lead to improved stability, since the oom-killer has a regrettable habit of killing sshd.

We need to test that assertion, though, and that sounds suspiciously like work.

Another todo:

Currently the stuff related to /etc/xen/auto is in "tips," which has served as our catchall thus far.  This is. . .  tolerable, but I'd like to move it somewhere else, because the point of segregating the tips chapter is to keep the special-interest, possibly-broken stuff kind of isolated.

Unfortunately, there's no really great place for the information with the current structure.  Probably "quick start," which bugs me because I didn't want that to contain any unique information.

On the other hand, anyone who's skipping quick start probably already knows how to symlink stuff into /etc/xen/auto, so it's not a big deal.

Thinking about the "tips" chapter.  Here's the stuff that I can remember offhand, without looking, that we promised/planned we would explain in it:

framebuffer
serial console
kernel compilation (special reference to debugging knobs)
lilo
domu 3d (iffy.  very iffy.  i wonder if the new boxes will have iommu?)
xenbus/xenstore (our example used it _and_ the framebuffer, actually.  it's really cool.  or so I say, but I'm easily impressed.)

So.  A new job, a move in progress, a bike accident, some replacing of laptops -- I don't even know where to begin.

But now I am trying, really I am, to get back into writing.  I've put it off for the last few weeks.  Haven't had the space or time.  But now I've got to pay the piper.

I mean, this thing is getting uncomfortably official.  You know it's on NSP's website?  True story.