Archived/Hackathon/May2013

When and Where ?

We confirmed the Xen Hackathon for May 16-17, 2013 in Dublin Ireland.

• May 16th: 9AM to 5PM
• May 17th: 9AM to 5PM

More Information

• Announcement
• Event page
• Request invitation
• Register with an invitation code

Topics to Discuss, Code, Work on, ... at the Hackathon

Topics

Xen 4.3 Release Closing Date of insert: 29/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Lars Kurth Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: As we are all together, we should clean up documentation related to Xen 4.3 Xen 4.3 Feature List as well as Xen Release Features Xen 4.3 Man Pages Xen 4.3 Release Notes Outcomes: Good drafts of Xen 4.3 release documentation as well as a draf feature list for press coverage, etc. Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 18:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC): Feel free to make suggestions here  Lars.kurth 18:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

Xen Developer and Roadmap discussion Date of insert: 02/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Lars Kurth Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: As we are all together, the Xen maintainers and committers should discuss Xen 4.4 roadmap items as well as any other items that need coordination. Alternatively we could consider doing this the day before the Hackathon. Outcomes: A rough plan for Xen 4.4 and meeting minutes Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 15:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC): Feel free to make suggestions here  Lars.kurth 15:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC): Will attend  Ijc 14:06, 12 March 2013 (UTC): Will attend  Msw 22:13, 27 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

Xen on ARM "Portathon" Date of insert: 12/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Ian Campbell Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Not too hard if you are familiar with the hardware and have Linux running Skills Needed: Mostly C Description: Xen on ARM has reached the point where it is becoming reasonable to port it to a wider set of hardware. The idea of this session would be to take advantage of the presence of the Xen on ARM developers to port Xen to your hardware. In order to participate you will need: Access to a hardware platform which supports the ARM virtualisation extension which you wish to port Xen to. Could be local access if hardware is portable, otherwise remote serial and power control will be required Software models could also be considered An existing functioning port of Linux >3.8 to the platform Access to datasheets and/or extensive knowledge of the hardware platform Outcomes: Xen running on some new ARM platforms

Update toolstacks to make use of libxl and/or xl Date of insert: 12/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Ian Campbell Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Depends on the complexity of the toolstack which needs modifying Skills Needed: Some C, perhaps knowledge of the C bindings for the language which the toolstack uses. Description: There are various higher-level toolstacks which make direct use of the xend interfaces (either through xm, sxp or XML/RPC). This project offers an opportunity to collaborate on porting toolstacks to use xl or other modern toolstack interfaces. This project also covers those who wish to use libxl directly to implement their own toolstack or to port an existing toolstack from other lower-level interface (such as libxc) to libxl. It is expected that participants will be familiar with the internals of the toolstack the wish to port to libxl/xl Outcomes: More toolstacks using xl or libxl.

VMFUNC, grant table operations, Intel QuickData engines Date of insert: 12/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Need to read dense Intel docs. Skills Needed: Wielding a sharpie. Description: Intel has released a new VMX type operations that allows one guest to switch in another guest page-tables. We could utilize this for a backend guest to switch in the page-tables that the frontend has provided via the ring. Along with the Intel QuickData engine we could keep the contents of these pages (aka grefs) in the LLC. This is all handwaving at this point and I am hoping to brain-storm the problem and issues we will face. Outcomes: Faster performance.

Xen network improvement Date of insert: 12/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Wei Liu Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Skills Needed: Description: There have been many ideas with regard to improving Xen network performance. Several are in the process of upstreaming. But there are still many open questions. Discussing benchmark result, identifying bottlenecks and decide what is worth prototyping would be very useful. Outcomes: Faster performance.

Close Security Vulnerability Process Changes as well as discuss possible mods to the Governance Process Date of insert: 29/03/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Lars Kurth Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: We should take the opportunity of core developers present to close down the proposed Security Vulnerability Process discussion as much as possible. Also, I wanted to discuss whether we can be a little bit more open about membership of the Security Response team (i.e. who is on it, and what the process/mechanism is of becoming a member of the team). And maybe any other security related questions. I would also like to take the opportunity of discussing possible changes to the governance process. Outcomes: Not specified, project outcomes Peer Review Comments  Msw 22:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend  Lars.kurth 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

Update OpenNebula integration to use latest Xen version Date of insert: 11/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Javi Fontan Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Depends on how much code we can reuse from previous integration Skills Needed: Bash and Ruby knowledge and perhaps some C++ to change deployment file generation. Description: OpenNebula is a Cloud Computing Manager that has drivers to create and manage Xen VMs. The integration with Xen was done some time ago for version 3.x and even we are continuously bug fixing and updating it still uses xm command to perform all management. We want to change the way of interacting with Xen to new versions (libxl, xl) and explore new features that can be added. Outcomes: OpenNebula is properly integrated with Xen 4.x

Port Synnefo to Xen Date of insert: 18/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Constantinos Venetsanopoulos Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Not too hard if you are familiar with Ganeti internals wrt the hypervisor layer Skills Needed: Python, knowledge of Ganeti internals and Xen networking Description: Synnefo is open source cloud software. It is a complete cloud stack (Compute/Network/Storage/Image/Identity Service) with a unique design approach that keeps clear separation between the cloud and cluster layers. It exposes the OpenStack REST APIs to the outside world, but in the same time uses Ganeti for the low-level VM management part. Currently, Synnefo supports only KVM, but because of the fact that it uses Ganeti at the backend, it is easy to port it to also use Xen as the underlying hypervisor. The only part of Synnefo that needs to be ported is the networking component (snf-network). However, for this to happen, we first need to implement the corresponding feature in Ganeti, to be able to run a custom script with information in its environment every time a vif gets created. Outcomes: Synnefo running with Xen as the underlying hypervisor

Export information about the shutdown (or reboot) reason for an instance. Date of insert: 19/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Michele Tartara Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: ? Skills Needed: C and some knowledge of the codebase to find the proper place where to implement this Description: Currently, Xen is aware of the reason why an instance was shutdown or rebooted (as described in http://zhigang.org/wiki/XenVirtualMachineShutdown), but it only makes it externally available in its log file, which is extremely long and therefore inefficient to parse. External tools can be interested in obtaining such information. This project aims to find and implement the proper way to export it (for example, by invoking an optional external callback script and passing the name of the instance, the shutdown reason and some other useful information, such as the timestamp). A partial implementation was already proposed previously in http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-03/msg02602.html and can be used as a starting point. Outcomes: Xen provides externally the state change reason of instances.

Xen4CentOS : An effort to get a working, supported and stable platform for Xen4 on CentOS-6 Date of insert: 25/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Karanbir Singh Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: Better integration of Xen4 and xl tools with CentOS. A better understanding of the challenges around xapi/xen/centos and what that means for people migrating from CentOS-5/xen to Xen4CentOS. Outcomes: N/A Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

CentOS+XAPI, Ubuntu+XAPI and OpenStack. Date of insert: 25/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: John Garbutt Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: Work out the story for XAPI, CentOS, Ubuntu and OpenStack . Outcomes: N/A Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

XAPI development process. Date of insert: 25/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: John Garbutt, Mike McClurg (or other reps from the XAPI team) Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: Currently there are gaps in the XAPI development process. Work with the XAPI team on: how we submit patches what release cadence should be how does this affect the distro packages how code is reviewed where the bugs live how the release planning goes and who does all that Also confirming what bits are in and out of the Linux foundation. Outcomes: N/A Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

Discuss roadmap for libxl and libvirt libxl driver. Date of insert: 25/04/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Jim Fehlig Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: N/A Skills Needed: N/A Description: Also hack on some new features in the libxl driver! Outcomes: N/A Peer Review Comments  Lars.kurth 13:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC): Will attend

Xen perf support Date of insert: 13/05/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Boris Ostrovsky Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Not too difficult Skills Needed: Knowledge of perf is helpful. Description: Talk about what needs to be done to provide proper perf support for dom0 (and non-privileged PV guests). While the first cut of this seems to be semi-working, there is a number of open issues that I'd like to discuss Outcomes: Better understanding of system behavior

Xen full EFI support Date of insert: 15/05/2013; Verified: Not updated in 2020; GSoC: N/A Technical contact: Daniel Kiper Mailing list/forum for project: xen-devel@ IRC channel for project: #xen-devel Difficulty: Not too difficult Skills Needed: Knowledge of EFI/ACPI/multiboot/GRUB/GRUB2 stuff Description: Currently Xen itself has EFI support, however, it does not work in all cases. For example Xen on EFI platform could be started only directly from EFI boot loader or EFI shell. It means that EFI + GRUB + Xen does not work. Support for this config was requested many times and I stepped in to solve this issue. Preliminary R&D work is done and some ideas are outlined. Now I would like to discuss them. Outcomes: Verification of ideas

Confirmed Attendees

• Ian Campbell,Citrix
• Dario Faggioli, Citrix
• Javier Fontan, OpenNebula
• Fabian Geisberger, Google
• Daniel Kiper, Oracle
• Lars Kurth, Citrix
• Olivier Lambert, Vates
• Balazs Lecz, Google
• Boris Ostrovsky, Oracle
• Michele Tartara, Google
• Patrick Tobin, University College Dublin
• Guido Trotter, Google
• Helga Velroyen, Google
• Konrad Wilk, Oracle
• Julien Grall, Citrix
• Stefano Stabellini, Citrix
• Andre Przywara, Calxeda/Linaro
• Julien Fontanet, Vates
• Jonathan Fraser, Broadcom
• Andrew Cooper
• Malcolm Crossley
• David Vrabel
• Dimitris Aragiorgis, GRNET
• Stratos Psomadakis, GRNET
• Karanbir Singh, CentOS
• Anthony Perard
• John Garbutt, Rackspace
• George Dunlap, Citrix
• Matt Wilson, Amazon Web Services
• Jim Fehlig, Suse
• Anil Madhavapeddy, Cambridge University
• Jonathan Ludlam
• Rob Hoes
• Dave Scott
• Wei Liu, Citrix
• Roger Pau Monné, Citrix

People that have been granted an invite but have not yet confirmed

• Kelly Kingsley
• Frank Fowley, DCU