Hello!
In my personal repo I have an updated version of 4.14.1 with security patches and the changes suggested in the last couple weeks. With the new hook, it will boot recent kernels, but both the most recent linux and linux-lts kernels will not start any virtual machines. I'm trying to narrow down where the problem happens still, but what I know is that 5.4.88 works, and 5.4.94 doesn't. If you want to help me track down the problem, my repo is at https://github.com/refutationalist/saur
And now some future stuff where I need some feedback:
Stubdom: I'm now transitioning to using the package without stubdom support. In the comments, I think I was the only person who needed it. If that continues to be the case, I will begin to phase out stubdom starting with the next Xen release.
SDL2: The number of dependencies goes up significantly if one uses the built-in QEMU support, which is the default as the package in extra does not have xen support in it. Since I run Xen almost entirely on headless machines, I'd like to remove SDL2 support. Unless someone says otherwise, I'll have QEMU configured to not use sdl2, otherwise I'll have to turn it into a toggle.
libvirt, qemu, and getting the package into the repos: I've talked to a couple of TUs who are interested in getting the package into the repos, but not much has actually happened on that score. I could try to become a TU myself, but I do have a lot on my plate and I don't know that I have the brain space to handle that. Would it make more sense for me to just abandon the package and hope a TU picks it up? Some direction from someone who knows the political ins and outs of Arch Linux would be very helpful.
Pinned Comments
Refutationalist commented on 2025-03-12 12:06 (UTC) (edited on 2025-03-13 08:23 (UTC) by Refutationalist)
We've moved to the newly-stable 4.20.0 branch. There are also other changes:
If you're still using pygrub note that it is deprecated. The solution is to build PV grub instead, which used to be in AUR but is now missing. I am asking a couple questions on the mailing list, and I intend to put my current build of xen-grub (which supersedes xen-pvhgrub) on AUR as soon as possible. If you need to build it before that occurs, you can find it in my PKGBUILD repo.
EDIT: 4.20.0-2 adds support for the xen-edk2 package, which has a fixed UEFI for xen