Graphics Libraries

The guest device model can be exported using either by VNC or SDL method.

1. VNC: This is the default configuration for VMX guest config.

If while building the xen binaries libvncserver is not found, it disables the vnc support for device model, and VNC can not be used. The libvncserver can be obtained from: http://libvncserver.sourceforge.net/

You also need vncviewer installed on the target system in order to start the vnc window automatically with the vmx domain creation.

2. SDL: this is disbaled by default in the xmexample.vmx config file.

This use SDL library to send pixel traffic to the grapical X client, if you are running X server on remote machine this will transfer each pixel over network, which make guest vga slow. It is usable as a fallback option to vnc.

FYI It is also possible to enable both SDL & VNC for a vmx guest, which will give 2 X windows showing same thing.

HVMloader

In order to use the full virtualization (on VT-capable processor), Xen uses the HVMloader tool. On XEN 3.2.1, hvmloader requires "dev86 package version >= 0.16.14 to build firmware!". In Debian Etch 4.0 (tested on 4.0r3), the dev86 package was split in the bin86 bcc packages. See: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2006-02/msg00207.html

x86 real mode assembler and linker

While building x86_64 version of xen binaries: to build the BIOS x86 real mode assembler is required, which by default is not provided by the x86_64 distrbutions. In order to able to build the BIOS you need to install i386 version of the x86 assembler on the x86_64 build system. The assmebler rpm can be found at http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=dev86&submit=Search+...