Eric Lee / linux-smarc-t335x-v3.2

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Commit d0153ca35d344d9b640dc305031b0703ba3f30f0

Authored by Alok Kataria
Committed by Ingo Molnar
1 parent f579bbcd9b
Exists in master and in 4 other branches v3.2_AM335xPSP_04.06.00.11, v3.2_NEWT335xPSP_04.06.00.11, v3.2_SBC_SMARTMEN, v3.2_SMARCT335xPSP_04.06.00.11

x86, vmi: Mark VMI deprecated and schedule it for removal 

Add text in feature-removal.txt indicating that VMI will be removed in
the 2.6.37 timeframe.

Signed-off-by: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
Acked-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
LKML-Reference: <1254193238.13456.48.camel@ank32.eng.vmware.com>
[ removed a bogus Kconfig change, marked (DEPRECATED) in Kconfig ]
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

Showing 3 changed files with 41 additions and 2 deletions Side-by-side Diff

Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
Diff comments   View file @ d0153ca
... ... @@ -451,4 +451,34 @@
451 451 will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of
452 452 sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too.
453 453 Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
  454 +
  455 +----------------------------
  456 +
  457 +What: Support for VMware's guest paravirtuliazation technique [VMI] will be
  458 + dropped.
  459 +When: 2.6.37 or earlier.
  460 +Why: With the recent innovations in CPU hardware acceleration technologies
  461 + from Intel and AMD, VMware ran a few experiments to compare these
  462 + techniques to guest paravirtualization technique on VMware's platform.
  463 + These hardware assisted virtualization techniques have outperformed the
  464 + performance benefits provided by VMI in most of the workloads. VMware
  465 + expects that these hardware features will be ubiquitous in a couple of
  466 + years, as a result, VMware has started a phased retirement of this
  467 + feature from the hypervisor. We will be removing this feature from the
  468 + Kernel too. Right now we are targeting 2.6.37 but can retire earlier if
  469 + technical reasons (read opportunity to remove major chunk of pvops)
  470 + arise.
  471 +
  472 + Please note that VMI has always been an optimization and non-VMI kernels
  473 + still work fine on VMware's platform.
  474 + Latest versions of VMware's product which support VMI are,
  475 + Workstation 7.0 and VSphere 4.0 on ESX side, future maintainence
  476 + releases for these products will continue supporting VMI.
  477 +
  478 + For more details about VMI retirement take a look at this,
  479 + http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html
  480 +
  481 +Who: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
  482 +
  483 +----------------------------
... ... @@ -491,7 +491,7 @@
491 491 source "arch/x86/xen/Kconfig"
492 492  
493 493 config VMI
494   - bool "VMI Guest support"
  494 + bool "VMI Guest support (DEPRECATED)"
495 495 select PARAVIRT
496 496 depends on X86_32
497 497 ---help---
... ... @@ -499,6 +499,15 @@
499 499 (it could be used by other hypervisors in theory too, but is not
500 500 at the moment), by linking the kernel to a GPL-ed ROM module
501 501 provided by the hypervisor.
  502 +
  503 + As of September 2009, VMware has started a phased retirement
  504 + of this feature from VMware's products. Please see
  505 + feature-removal-schedule.txt for details. If you are
  506 + planning to enable this option, please note that you cannot
  507 + live migrate a VMI enabled VM to a future VMware product,
  508 + which doesn't support VMI. So if you expect your kernel to
  509 + seamlessly migrate to newer VMware products, keep this
  510 + disabled.
502 511  
503 512 config KVM_CLOCK
504 513 bool "KVM paravirtualized clock"
arch/x86/kernel/vmi_32.c
Diff comments   View file @ d0153ca
... ... @@ -648,7 +648,7 @@
648 648  
649 649 pv_info.paravirt_enabled = 1;
650 650 pv_info.kernel_rpl = kernel_cs & SEGMENT_RPL_MASK;
651   - pv_info.name = "vmi";
  651 + pv_info.name = "vmi [deprecated]";
652 652  
653 653 pv_init_ops.patch = vmi_patch;
654 654