[asterisk-users] zaptel huge irq problem

[Stephen Bosch]

François Delawarde wrote:
> aaah...
> 
> I'm running asterisk in a Xen kernel, but not on a virtual machine
> (DomU), only on Dom0, so it's "supposed" to be running on the physical
> server (no PCI frontend device, ...). I had seen possible problems with
> older versions of Xen, but only with ztdummy timing and on DomU virtual
> machines. On Xen mailing list, they all advise to use a digium PCI card
> to remove those problems.

You "had seen?" Did you have these problems personally, or are you going
by mailing list postings?

> I will test and report what happens with a normal kernel, but meanwhile
> doesn't anyone know of a possible possibility to make it work with this
> setting playing for example with IRQ priorities or something, or isn't
> there any hope at all?

We abandoned Xen (recent versions too!) after serious interrupt problems
(it doesn't matter if you are in domU or dom0, by the way) that caused
the entire *system*, with all the VMs, to lock up *hard* whenever we
started to push significant amounts of data through anywhere, be it an
Ethernet controller or a SCSI adapter.

It is in need of a lot of work. Their efforts to commercialize it are
premature. We had to learn this hard way, unfortunately.

If you need virtualization that badly, you might want to consider going
with VMware Server, which is now freely available. My experience with
VMware has been better.

-Stephen-