FreeBSD/Xen status update

FOSDEM 2015

During the last year (2014) a lot of interesting development happened around the FreeBSD/Xen port. FreeBSD slowly moved from running as a PV with HVM drivers, to running as a PVHVM guests and finally as a PVH DomU. The last step into getting full Xen support into FreeBSD was to get it to run as a PVH Dom0, which is now finished and in a tech-preview status.

This talk will include a high-level description of the modifications needed in order to get FreeBSD running as a Dom0, and a demo of FreeBSD running as a PVH Xen Dom0.

The goal of this talk is to provide information about the Xen PVH and FreeBSD architecture, and to encourage other OS hackers to work on it.

Basic Xen description and specific Xen concepts.
How the Xen community works (compared to BSD communities).
A look into new Xen features (PVH).
Work being done in FreeBSD improving Xen support.
Demo of a FreeBSD PVH Dom0.

Speakers: Roger Pau Monné