Broken dependency for xen-blkfront and xen-netfront

[ctr]

When running in a xen domU the modules xen-blkfront and xen-netfront (for access to virtual block and net devices) require the Xen "platform-pci" module to be loaded (or compiled into the kernel), but this is not build into standard/install initramfs in Natty. The modules can be loaded, but do not detect any devices due to the lack of platform-pci.

A workaround (on an already running system) is to add platform-pci to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, but the lack of the module in the install image prevents an installation in the first place. (Tested with Natty Alpha1 and Alpha2)

Additional details are available here: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.xen.devel/96569

(This only applies to Natty and possibly backports, as this is only used for "PV-on-HVM" feature which was introduced in 2.6.37)

[ctr (ctr)]

Actually platform-pci.ko is missing in 2.6.38 (Alpha2) completely and is not just missing in (install/stock) initramfs of 2.6.37-12-server / 2.6.37-7-server (Alpha1).

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi ctr,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/ . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 714184

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

This is definitely still the case, as booting Natty as a Xen guest causes it to fail to detect any block devices, and reverting back to 2.6.35 works around the issue. It seems that the answer is either to use the -virtual kernel or to specify xen-platform-pci in the initramfs-tools/modules file.