[xenpreview-dev] Physical NICs in DomU

[Jan Beulich]

>>> "Manzer, Kirk" <kirk.manzer at hp.com> 02.05.07 22:37 >>>
>We have encountered a need to attach physical NICs directly to XEN vms
>running para-virtualized.  What we have found is a kernel parameter
>CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_BACKEND_PASS must be set for this to work, but by
>default it is not set in the kernel.  Is this correct?  Is there a
>better way of direct attach of a physical NIC to a DomU?  If this
>parameter must be setup, can the default in the future be yes so a
>kernel rebuild is not necessary, or does this have negative impact on
>Dom0?  We are testing with SLES10 SP1 RC3.

With properly written drivers I would assume that either of the three
XEN_PCIDEV_BACKEND_* options would work - why do you think that
only this one will do the job, and not CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_BACKEND_VPCI,
as has been chosen for the full lifetime of SLE10?

Jan