High Tech Sorcery

I have been looking to various GNU/Linux distributions to determine their level of support for Xen.  Here’s what I found:

• Debian Etch – Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (via backports), Linux kernel 2.6.26 (via backports)
• Debian Lenny – Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1, Linux dom0 kernel 2.6.26
• Debian Squeeze (testing) – Xen Hypervisor 3.4.2, Linux dom0 kernel ???
• Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) – Xen Hypervisor 3.3.0 (via backports), Linux dom0 kernel 2.6.24
• Ubuntu 8.10-10.04 (Intrepid-Lucid) – Xen Hypervisor 3.3.0, no Linux dom0 kernel
• OpenSuse 11.2 – Xen Hypervisor 3.4.1, Linux dom0 kernel 2.6.31

As much as I like Debian and Debian based distros I think OpenSuse is probably the best platform for hosting Xen at the moment.

I think Ubuntu 9.04 is the only version of Ubuntu suffering from this bug but it appears as though no fix for this serious regression will be forthcoming.  To get pygrub to work you actually have to fix a bug in the python 2.5 curses library.  Open “/usr/lib/python2.5/curses/__init__.py” and add the following lines starting at line 17:

import os as _os
import sys as _sys

After that pygrub should work correctly.  More information about this bug can be found in launchpad bug #395321.