Xen Document Days/TODO

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Requested Documentation

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Open work items

Xen Wikipedia page

Review and update http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen - in particular the "Host: Unix-like systems" is out-of-date. The Guest section is too.

Getting started with Xen using xen-tools

Given that we are getting a lot more total novices to the community I was wondering whether it makes sense to add something like: getting started with xen-tools. See http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Building_a_Xen_Guest_Domain_using_Xen-Tools and http://xen-tools.org/software/xen-tools/ and http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/xen/users/246910 this.

Make Host Install and Guest Install more useful

• Lars.kurth Note: both pages share Template:Distro_Resources
• Docs for many distros are missing: identify what docs are missing or out of date and put them on the todo list

Feature Status Doc

For end-users showing which features are expected to work in 4.0 and, possibly 4.1.2. Most people don't know if Feature X is even supposed to work on the Xen build their distro uses. And almost everything is broken somewhere! This is tricky since 4.0 (debian) still has rough edges like immediate panic when doing mem-set on a HV domU by mistake

• Lars.kurth One way to approach handle this is to go through release notes and old blog posts and collate a table.

XCP Overview

Similar to Xen Overview)

A Xen Performance Tuning Guide

• Which workloads work for which virt mode. Network considerations. NUMA. VCPU Pinning. Etc.
• Examples from the KVM world: Guest perf tuning, KVM options affecting performance, Comprehensive guide covering pinning, caching, memory, huge pages, etc.

Improve networking documentation

Expand Host Configuration/Networking docs to cover non-bridge network configurations supported by xend (e.g. routed, nat'd). Possibly split into a page per config.

A Xen Security Guide

The different options in Xen for Security, trade-offs, how to set them up, how to test Xen for security and how to optimize for different scenarios

• • Lars.kurth 09:48, 27 March 2012 (UTC): Category:Security contains some security related docs
  • Lars.kurth 11:01, 4 April 2012 (UTC): It would be good if we could document a) XSM, b) Introspection API, c) Xen and SELinux in Dom0, d) Memory Access API (introduced in 4.1)
• User Docs that where migrating content would make sense and update such as (we can attach PDF's to the wiki now for starters, or we can use a conversion tool
  • http://bits.xensource.com/Xen/docs/user.pdf

VCPU pinning

Some more documentation outside the context of NUMA, see Xen_Numa_Scheduling_and_Placement

xenpm usage recommendations

There is Xen power management and Xenpm command which may all be outdated. These should probably be reviewed and updated.

HOWTO : using xm trigger to poweroff or firing off NMIs

Howto on using xm trigger to poweroff or firing off NMIs.

HOWTO: Setting boot order for domUs (PV and HVM)

Howto set up boot order for domUs (all virt modes)

HOWTO: Chain pypxeboot and pygrub

How to chain pypxeboot and pygrub

• Lars.kurth 10:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC): Is pypxeboot popular at all?
• Fheigl I added that. It is somewhat common, OVM 2 and OVM 3 rely on it for PXE installs. I'm not sure if xenpvnetboot is the same, or works. The use case is "you want to use the same installation server for Xen VMs and phys. servers. You want to be able to reinstall them based on PXE reply.
• Fheigl There is documentation for pypxeboot, but there is no (afaik) documentation for how pygrub is used as a fallback loader. We wasted many days just to get some hack that can't even load a newer kernel. Which sucks, in the end you spend more time/money making PV PXE boot work than you save by using virtualized servers.
• Fheigl Q3: How could it be popular given the state of documentation. <= Key issue to the left of this sentence.

Done Recently

• Xen Overview which explains the top level architectural features and options, trade-offs and links to examples tutorials that show how you set these up
• List i.e. stuff what to test after packaging. This would avoid the current state of affairs where most distros are infact broken w/re to Xen. See Distros
• Installation Guides: How to install on various distros. Tag with Category:Host Install and Category:Guest_Install.
• vcpu pinning

Developer Docs

Docs that need attention or are missing

• Make XAPI docs (built from source) available on xen.org
• PVOPS portal on xen.org - Konrad volunteered
• some more xenstore docs (i.e. recent python bindings that were sent to the -users list
• Using libxenstat python bindings (imo they're broken)
• More PV protocol docs (see recent patches to blkif.h for example)
• Document xenstore paths used by guests and toolstack etc
• Xen command line options documentation in tree (started, but not complete)

Wiki Maintenance

Fix artcles that need attention

• Category:Contains_Needs_Action - Pages that need fixing
• Category:Contains_Needs_Formatting - Pages that need formatting
• Special:WantedPages - Missing pages (many may just need to be migrated), some may be obsolete

Review Categorization

We need to go through some of the categies on the http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Main_Page and decise whether there are documents in each category that need to be highlighted in a trail, etc.

Loose ends on migration

• Migrate remaining wiki pages (see Wiki_Community/Migration_Instructions_from_Old_to_New_Xen_Wiki)