Xen activation/de-activation via menu.rc.local

S1L1K0N · Jan 27, 2019

Hi, I'm looking for some direction with regards to having the ability to activate/de-activate the Xen hypervisor via the initial FreeBSD boot menu. According to the handbook, " try-included /boot/xen.4th " should be added to menu.rc.local. I've done this but upon reboot there is no option to enable/disable the Xen kernel (meaning the system always boots using Xen). I'm running FreeBSD 12.0 and Xen 4.11 (kernel & tools). This did work on FreeBSD 11.x and an older version of Xen I had running previously. Thanks.

Phishfry · Jan 28, 2019

I am unsure about your Xen task but I wanted to note that the handbook for Xen is going to need modifying.
Forth is no longer the default but LUA is. So those instructions only work on FreeBSD < version 12.

S1L1K0N said:
According to the handbook, " try-included /boot/xen.4th " should be added to menu.rc.local.

xen.4th quoted here will not work on FreeBSD 12 or greater. Just a heads up.

S1L1K0N · Jan 28, 2019

Phishfry said:
I am unsure about your Xen task but I wanted to note that the handbook for Xen is going to need modifying.
Forth is no longer the default but LUA is. So those instructions only work on FreeBSD < version 12.

xen.4th quoted here will not work on FreeBSD 12 or greater. Just a heads up.

Ahh, thanks for your reply and your statement shines some light on the situation.
Well, Xen 4.11 works in FreeBSD 12, but I'm still not any closer to understanding how to modify the menu to enable/disable it. A quick Google of FreeBSD LUA didn't point me in a direction that was helpful...