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I have heard that Xen is now fully included into mainline Linux, and is usable via Dom0.

What is Dom0, what is its purpose? How can one use it?

Rui F Ribeiro
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orftz
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    This question doesn't show much effort to solve your own questions before asking. Please read the [FAQ](http://unix.stackexchange.com/faq) and keep those guidelines in mind as you ask questions. – Caleb Jun 04 '11 at 22:07
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    "What is XXX" questions are best answered by web search, such as Google. – alex Jun 05 '11 at 19:27
  • The question has been reworded. – orftz Jun 05 '11 at 20:27
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    @orfz: Please don't change questions mid-stream to ask something different than when you started! – Caleb Jun 06 '11 at 14:16
  • @Caleb, sorry, but this was needed for the question to be relevant. – orftz Jun 06 '11 at 14:42

1 Answers1

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From the Xen wiki:

Dom0, or domain zero to expand the abbreviation, is the first domain started by the Xen hypervisor on boot. It has special privileges, like being able to cause new domains to start, and being able to access the hardware directly. Unless DriverDomains are being used, it is responsible for running all of the device drivers for the hardware. For hardware that is made available to other domains, like network interfaces and disks, it will run the BackendDriver, which multiplexes and forwards to the hardware requests from the FrontendDriver in each DomU.

Modified versions of Linux, NetBSD and Solaris can be used as the dom0.

The big to-do with Dom0 support being in the mainline kernel is that they won't have to constantly keep up with the patches previous required (and hinted at in the last line above). From the blog post announcement:

As Linux evolves, now, within that code base, the Linux/Xen bits will evolve at the same rate without separate patch trees and big chunks of code to carry along.

Caleb
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