RFT: New dom0 & Xen stack

Linode Staff

RFT: New dom0 & Xen stack

We're looking for people willing to migrate their Linode to a special host in the Newark, NJ facility to help test a new dom0 (host) kernel. This new kernel will allow us to finally move away from the xensource-provided dom0 kernel which has been stuck at 2.6.18 - a kernel tree released back in September of 2006. That's almost 3 FULL YEARS of kernel fixes, features, and enhancements that we (the Linode administrators) have been missing out on. And, it's been a total pain to support 2.6.18 on newer hardware, requiring us to back-port device drivers and deal with other quirks. So, we're hoping this fixes all of life's problems.

DISCLAIMER

We've thrashed this stack in our internal testing and it's performed well. However, due to the nature of unproven software, this stack may crash or experience extended downtime, we may reboot it often and without warning, and it may eat your filesystem. We'll obviously make all efforts to prevent bad things from happening and to keep downtime to a minimum, however: you have been warned.

If you'd like to participate, please submit a support ticket and we'll get the ball rolling.

Your Linode and its data will be migrated to the test host. Your IP address will stay the same if your Linode is already in the Newark facility - otherwise your IP address will change and your migration will take much longer.

Thanks,

-Chris

3 Replies

Seems to be running fine to me. Possibly even faster. Should I be using "Latest 2.6 Series" kernel or something newer?

@BarkerJr:

Seems to be running fine to me. Possibly even faster. Should I be using "Latest 2.6 Series" kernel or something newer?
You may run which ever kernel you prefer. Everything on this stack should "just work" as it does on the existing stack.

Still would like more people to help load this box up and run it through its paces!

-Chris

Migration was seamless for me. No hiccups so far.

The only "unusual" aspect of my setup is an ext4 disk image, so I'm not expecting any trouble. I'll certainly keep an eye on it.

~JW

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