Arch Linux User Repository

Important: QEMU is now it's own package. See xen-qemu.

Here's my updated Xen, which now tracks git stable, as suggested by the Xen security team. For more information about the build, check my PKGBUILD git repo: https://github.com/refutationalist/saur

xen-pvhgrub, a method for booting kernels inside a PVH domain will be in AUR as soon as it lets me. I'm going to be looking into a package repo for now.

EDIT: xen-pvhgrub is now available in AUR.

Hi I'm having two strange problems (unrelated?) with two different servers.On an old IBM3100 M4 server latest xen qemuless version is working fine but for some reason limits the memory to only 8Gb (it has 24Gb). Booting directly to kernel without xen, memory is properly detected. Passing mem=24G to xen.cfg doesnt reflect any change On the other hand on a Huawei server im stuck on kernel 5.19.11 cause trying to scale up this version it wont boot (errors trying to mount root). Again booting without xen it works fine (even with latest 6.xx version) Thanks in advance! Martin

Xen 4.16.2 has been officially released.

https://xenproject.org/downloads/xen-project-archives/xen-project-4-16-series/xen-project-4-16-2/

@Refutationalist, thanks for your efforts.

@ArthurBorsboom I'm blocking on a rather sizeable patchset for {o,}xenstored at the moment, but once I get xen compiling again I'll look directly at that. Once I have those things tackled, I'll merge that branch in and update AUR officially.

Tracking updates to qemu is a bigger job than I expected and I'm going to have to implement some infrastructure and automation if I'm going to keep track. This will likely culminate in a publicly available repo.

"xen-qemuless-again/xen" builts and boots (although the Dom0 VM is not all the way stable, but I guess that is package unrelated).

"xen-qemuless-again/xen-qemu" does not built. The error is related to the libbpf. My system has libbpf v1.0.1.

/home/arthur/Downloads/saur-xen-qemuless-again/xen-qemu/src/build/../qemu-7.0.0/ebpf/ebpf_rss.c:52: undefined reference to `bpf_program__set_socket_filter'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
[2582/2620] Compiling C object tests/qtest/virtio-net-failover.p/virtio-net-failover.c.o
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

My solution was to break qemu out of the package and build it to Xen spec from upstream. My work is in this branch: https://github.com/refutationalist/saur/tree/xen-qemuless-again

This tree also moves to the Xen repo rather than using tarballs as that's what the XSAs really want, but I'm not sure if I should pin to the branch or a specific commit or what. There's also a GRUB2 in that branch that will let you boot kernels inside a PVH domU.

When I merge this branch back in I'm probably going to start looking into setting up a repo with my builds on it. It would solve many issues in other projects, and might simplify things for a lot of folks here.

I have reported the Xen building issue upstream.

https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2022-10/msg00816.html

If I understood it correct, two possible solutions are:

• Update qemu in the Xen build
• Use qemu of Arch Linux, which must have been build with Xen support.

Hopefully this is helpful in fixing the package.

Xen doesn't build anymore. I believe it is caused by the missing function 'bpf_program__set_socket_filter' of libbpf. Before this function was deprecated and now it has been removed (v1.0.1).

A downgrade to libbpf v0.8.1 fixes the Xen build problem. I recall vaguely that the downgrade of libbpg lead to qemu issues.

/bin/ld: libcommon.fa.p/ebpf_ebpf_rss.c.o: in function `ebpf_rss_load':
/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools/qemu-xen-build/../qemu-xen/ebpf/ebpf_rss.c:52: undefined reference to `bpf_program__set_socket_filter'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
...
...
...
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
make: *** [Makefile:156: run-ninja] Error 1
make: Leaving directory '/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools/qemu-xen-build'
make[3]: *** [Makefile:212: subdir-all-qemu-xen-dir] Error 2
make[3]: Leaving directory '/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools'
make[2]: *** [/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools/../tools/Rules.mk:161: subdirs-install] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:66: install] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/arthur/.cache/yay/xen/src/xen-4.16.1/tools'
make: *** [Makefile:140: install-tools] Error 2
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...
 -> error making: xen

I am not 100% sure, but Xen 4.16.2 might have been released, just not explicitly through the web interface.

https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.16.2/

Also, while debugging a compilation problem, it seems that the newer version of dependency libbpf (1.0 vs 0.8) does not play nice with Xen 4.16.x

Xen 4.16.2 should be out soon, but I'm changing some of the ways this package compiles. First, the XSA patches always suggest that they be applied not to the tarball but to stable branch. I'd been meaning to do it for a while, but the retbleed patchset was the final nail in the tarball coffin.

There is a problem, however. Xen's builtin QEMU doesn't build properly at the moment, which is precisely the problem earlier packagers had to contend with. We really should see about separating that out, since it's a build-within-a-build.

So with that, plus a couple other issues-- how to version this and whether or not I should pin the PKGBUILD to a specific commit-- you can check out what I'm working on in my PKGBUILD repo: https://github.com/refutationalist/saur

EDIT: in a branch on that repo, I've removed QEMU building from the xen package entirely, and now have a xen-qemu package that builds QEMU fairly closely to how Xen itself builds it, so it shouldn't conflict with an existing QEMU installation. I'm thinking this may be the way to go for now, just in case there's some future push to get Xen into the repos and therefore use Arch's included qemu.