Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758632AbZJHUZ5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:25:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756518AbZJHUZ4 (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:25:56 -0400 Received: from hera.kernel.org ([140.211.167.34]:53628 "EHLO hera.kernel.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755073AbZJHUZy (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:25:54 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 20:24:45 GMT From: tip-bot for Alok Kataria Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, hpa@zytor.com, mingo@redhat.com, chrisw@sous-sol.org, akataria@vmware.com, tglx@linutronix.de Reply-To: mingo@redhat.com, hpa@zytor.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, chrisw@sous-sol.org, tglx@linutronix.de, akataria@vmware.com In-Reply-To: <1254193238.13456.48.camel@ank32.eng.vmware.com> References: <1254193238.13456.48.camel@ank32.eng.vmware.com> To: linux-tip-commits@vger.kernel.org Subject: [tip:x86/urgent] x86, vmi: Mark VMI deprecated and schedule it for remval Message-ID: Git-Commit-ID: 6c42ffab4dc0e21f9c6adc906368e7e7c12df47f X-Mailer: tip-git-log-daemon MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Disposition: inline X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.0 (hera.kernel.org [127.0.0.1]); Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:24:48 +0000 (UTC) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 4516 Lines: 109 Commit-ID: 6c42ffab4dc0e21f9c6adc906368e7e7c12df47f Gitweb: http://git.kernel.org/tip/6c42ffab4dc0e21f9c6adc906368e7e7c12df47f Author: Alok Kataria AuthorDate: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:25:24 -0700 Committer: H. Peter Anvin CommitDate: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 13:21:04 -0700 x86, vmi: Mark VMI deprecated and schedule it for remval Add text in feature-removal.txt indicating that VMI will be removed in the 2.6.37 timeframe, and modify Kconfig to disable VMI by default. [ hpa: removed a bogus Kconfig change, marked (DEPRECATED) in Kconfig ] Signed-off-by: Alok N Kataria Acked-by: Chris Wright LKML-Reference: <1254193238.13456.48.camel@ank32.eng.vmware.com> Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin --- Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ arch/x86/Kconfig | 11 +++++++++- arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c | 2 +- 3 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt index 89a47b5..04e6c81 100644 --- a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt +++ b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt @@ -451,3 +451,33 @@ Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. Who: Tejun Heo + +---------------------------- + +What: Support for VMware's guest paravirtuliazation technique [VMI] will be + dropped. +When: 2.6.37 or earlier. +Why: With the recent innovations in CPU hardware acceleration technologies + from Intel and AMD, VMware ran a few experiments to compare these + techniques to guest paravirtualization technique on VMware's platform. + These hardware assisted virtualization techniques have outperformed the + performance benefits provided by VMI in most of the workloads. VMware + expects that these hardware features will be ubiquitous in a couple of + years, as a result, VMware has started a phased retirement of this + feature from the hypervisor. We will be removing this feature from the + Kernel too. Right now we are targeting 2.6.37 but can retire earlier if + technical reasons (read opportunity to remove major chunk of pvops) + arise. + + Please note that VMI has always been an optimization and non-VMI kernels + still work fine on VMware's platform. + Latest versions of VMware's product which support VMI are, + Workstation 7.0 and VSphere 4.0 on ESX side, future maintainence + releases for these products will continue supporting VMI. + + For more details about VMI retirement take a look at this, + http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html + +Who: Alok N Kataria + +---------------------------- diff --git a/arch/x86/Kconfig b/arch/x86/Kconfig index c876bac..07e0114 100644 --- a/arch/x86/Kconfig +++ b/arch/x86/Kconfig @@ -491,7 +491,7 @@ if PARAVIRT_GUEST source "arch/x86/xen/Kconfig" config VMI - bool "VMI Guest support" + bool "VMI Guest support (DEPRECATED)" select PARAVIRT depends on X86_32 ---help--- @@ -500,6 +500,15 @@ config VMI at the moment), by linking the kernel to a GPL-ed ROM module provided by the hypervisor. + As of September 2009, VMware has started a phased retirement + of this feature from VMware's products. Please see + feature-removal-schedule.txt for details. If you are + planning to enable this option, please note that you cannot + live migrate a VMI enabled VM to a future VMware product, + which doesn't support VMI. So if you expect your kernel to + seamlessly migrate to newer VMware products, keep this + disabled. + config KVM_CLOCK bool "KVM paravirtualized clock" select PARAVIRT diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c b/arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c index 31e6f6c..d430e4c 100644 --- a/arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c @@ -648,7 +648,7 @@ static inline int __init activate_vmi(void) pv_info.paravirt_enabled = 1; pv_info.kernel_rpl = kernel_cs & SEGMENT_RPL_MASK; - pv_info.name = "vmi"; + pv_info.name = "vmi [deprecated]"; pv_init_ops.patch = vmi_patch; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/