Which version of Xen does Qubes uses? Shouldn't it support OVMF already (HVM EFI boot)?

[Guerlan]

Xen 4.4 has support for OVMF. Which version of Xen does Qubes uses? Shouldn't it already have this option?

[awokd]

Guerlan:

> Xen 4.4 has support for OVMF. Which version of Xen does Qubes uses?
> Shouldn't it already have this option?
>

"xl info" in dom0 will tell you exactly. Mine says 4.8.5-14. Xen might
be able to support it (although looks like it's not in the default
build), but not the Qubes or QEMU/stubdomain tooling on top of Xen.

--
- don't top post
Mailing list etiquette:
- trim quoted reply to only relevant portions
- when possible, copy and paste text instead of screenshots

[Guerlan]

Can you tell me more about what is QEMU/stubdomain? Do you know of any reasons for them to not compile xen with efi boot support?

[awokd]

Guerlan:

> Can you tell me more about what is QEMU/stubdomain? Do you know of any
> reasons for them to not compile xen with efi boot support?

I meant to say libvirt (https://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Libvirt) more than
QEMU. Qubes uses libvirt calls to interact with Xen. Sometimes Xen
specific functionality (possibly OVMF as an example) aren't coded into
libvirt, so Qubes can't use that functionality without direct Xen calls.
I think they try to avoid those, in general. On top of that, the Qubes
utilities may not surface the option, even if it's available in Libvirt.
Different hard drive controllers are an example. It can be added, but
would take a programmer to add it to the layers.

[Guerlan]

Please take a look at: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5767

I asked and somebody said there's support.

I activated it, it almost worked.

On Windows it booted to the Windows logo and then stayed that way forever (with high CPU usage)

On Linux it passed the "try ubuntu without installing" but then halted

If you know how to debug that, it'd be great

I'm trying to understand all of this out of curiosity but maybe I can make it work, who knows