Comment 9 for bug 944582

I have now installed linux-image-extra-virtual and I confirm that xen-kbdfront is present and working. Thanks for the clarification.

I think that it's a bad packaging choice to have xen-kbdfront relegated to an "extra" package for a kernel that's supposed to be specifically tailored for use on virtual hosts. It has the strange consequence that the "generic" kernel works out of the box (i.e., without searching for extra packages) for a Xen VM with VNC console and the "virtual" kernel doesn't.

The package description of linux-image-3.0.0-16-virtual states:

"You likely do not want to install this package directly. Instead, install the linux-virtual meta-package, which will ensure that upgrades work correctly, and that supporting packages are also installed."

So I did begin by installing the linux-virtual package, for which the description claims:

"This package will always depend on the latest complete Linux kernel available for virtual machines."

I don't think a VM-oriented kernel metapackage should be described as providing a "complete" kernel and as ensuring that "supporting packages are also installed" if it leaves the Xen PV keyboard/mouse driver uninstalled. Neither linux-virtual nor linux-image-virtual has a "Depends" or "Suggests" relationship to linux-image-extra-virtual, and their descriptions don't mention it at all.

In short, I would suggest that either (1) xen-kbdfront should move into linux-image-virtual or (2) linux-virtual should depend on linux-image-extra-virtual.