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diff --git a/website/content/en/status/report-2022-10-2022-12/xen.adoc b/website/content/en/status/report-2022-10-2022-12/xen.adoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..3070e9b08c --- /dev/null +++ b/website/content/en/status/report-2022-10-2022-12/xen.adoc @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +=== FreeBSD/ARM64 on Xen + +Links: + +link:https://www.xenproject.org/[Xen Project] URL: link:https://www.xenproject.org/[https://www.xenproject.org/] + +link:https://wiki.freebsd.org/Xen[FreeBSD wiki page on Xen] URL: link:https://wiki.freebsd.org/Xen[https://wiki.freebsd.org/Xen] + +Contact: Elliott Mitchell <ehem+freebsd@m5p.com> + +Xen is an open source hypervisor. +Xen is one of the earliest hypervisors and has support for many OSes. +Since FreeBSD 8.0, GENERIC FreeBSD/x86 has been able to run on Xen. +Near the time FreeBSD was ported to run on Xen, work was started on running Xen on ARM. +For a number of years Linux has run fine on Xen/ARM, but FreeBSD hasn't been available. + +Having FreeBSD/ARM64 on Xen means any system capable of having Xen can also have FreeBSD in operation. +Of note, the Raspberry PI 4B has hardware (GICv3) which Xen works with. +If you're okay with Linux handling the hardware, you can use all the hardware of a Raspberry PI 4B. + +In 2014 a proof of concept of running FreeBSD/ARM64 on Xen was done by Julien Grall, but this was never polished for release. +During the past 2 years I've been working towards having this in FreeBSD's tree, so released versions of FreeBSD/ARM64 would run on Xen. +At this point all changes which need to be shared with the x86 Xen source code have been reviewed (not all reviews are on Phabricator). +This now awaits testing by Roger Pau Monné before being committed to FreeBSD's tree. + +I now urgently need someone with a high level of familiarity with the interrupt subsystem of FreeBSD on ARM64 to review (and commit) the ARM-specific portions. +My builds are functional far more often than they fail, and most failures are temporary problems in FreeBSD's tree. +Some significant issues will need to be addressed regarding FreeBSD's interrupt subsystem. + +There is substantial hope of having FreeBSD/ARM64 available for "DomU" (unprivileged) operation for FreeBSD 14.0. +There is potential for FreeBSD/ARM and FreeBSD/RISC-V to run on Xen in short order. +No plans currently exist for having FreeBSD/ARM64 operating as the controlling VM (someone could try to sponsor this). + +==== Thanks + +Thanks to Julien Grall <julien@xen.org> for the Proof of Concept. + +Thanks to Roger Pau Monné <royger@FreeBSD.org> for reviewing changes involving x86. + +Thanks to Mitchell Horne <mhorne@FreeBSD.org> for helping with various FreeBSD/ARM64 issues and addressing a key problem with FreeBSD/ARM64. |