Re: [bitfolk] Another prod regarding 32-bit guests

Top Page

Reply to this message
Author: Keith Williams
Date:  
To: BitFolk Users
Subject: Re: [bitfolk] Another prod regarding 32-bit guests
It's a good job you sent this reminder. I thought I had moved both VPS over
to 64 bit quite a while back when completely overhauled my email server. I
just checked and one of them is still on 32 bit. Oh well that's another job
for the weekend, I still have to upgrade that VPS to Buster so it makes
sense to do it all in one go

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:05, Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Those running 32-bit VMs who haven't thought about
> upgrading/reinstalling them to 64-bit yet, please have a read of:
>
>     “There are no current plans to remove support for 32bit PV
>     guests from Xen, but it is very much in the category of "you
>     shouldn't be using this mode any more".”

>
>
> https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2019-07/msg00827.html
>
> When Juergen asked for feedback on removing 32-bit guest support a
> year or two ago I told him that (at the time) more than 60% of
> BitFolk's user base was 32-bit and they'd need time to transition.
> Now that there is a stable grub release which supports PVH¹ booting
> Juergen is pushing this again and it will eventually go through to
> the Linux kernel.
>
> When Xen does remove 32-bit PV mode we can still continue to support
> 32-bit guests in PVH mode or HVM mode, so I will still make sure it
> works without customers having to do anything. But you should be
> clear that just because it will work doesn't mean it is a good idea!
>
> I have a round of updates to do and then I will start moving
> customers over to PVH mode where possible (requires 4.11+ kernel in
> guest).
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
> ¹ PVH mode guests run all the normal code paths of a kernel not
> under virtualisation except for their IO drivers like networking
> and block devices which are still paravirtualised for performance
> reasons. This results in a kernel that has a smaller attack
> surface as there is much less xen-specific code being used, it's
> faster and simpler. It also still doesn't require use of qemu on
> BitFolk's side. See:
>
>     https://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Understanding_the_Virtualization_Spectrum

>
> for more information.
>
> --
> https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> users@???
> https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/users
>