Bug 509448

This doesn't appear to be operating incorrectly.  Options are copied from the kernel specified as default, which in this case has means "ro root=/dev/lxvg/vol_root pci=bfsort console=xvc xencons=xvc" are the options that get copied.

I think the complaint is about the "kernel" line for Xen, which is the hypervisor.
Realize that booting Xen loads the Xen hypervisor which is specified on the "kernel" line, then the Xen version of the Linux kernel as specified on the first "module" line. Both the Xen hypervisor and the Xen kernel can have options.

The current version copies both lines, but it can't copy something from an entry that doesn't include it.  The entry it appears to be copying from in your example doesn't have any more options on that line.  When I try it on an entry that does have options there, they are copied.

Let's forget about the above example.  Let's take the following example, which is becoming more common because of KVM and Xen.

On my machine, I have both the kernel and the kernel-xen kernels installed, like so:

default=1
timeout=10
serial --unit=1 --speed=115200
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-92.el5xen)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-92.el5 com2=115200,8n1 console=com2L
	module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
	module /initrd-2.6.18-92.el5xen.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-92.el5)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200
	initrd /initrd-2.6.18-92.el5.img

(note that this is a perfectly valid configuration for a machine with serial on ttyS1)  I'm booted into the 2.6.18-92.el5 (non-xen) kernel.  I update to the RHEL-5.3 kernel, and now my grub.conf looks like:

default=1
timeout=10
#splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-128.el5xen)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-128.el5
        module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200
        module /initrd-2.6.18-128.el5xen.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-128.el5)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200
        initrd /initrd-2.6.18-128.el5.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-92.el5xen)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-92.el5 com1=115200,8n1
        module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
        module /initrd-2.6.18-92.el5xen.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-92.el5)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200
        initrd /initrd-2.6.18-92.el5.img

So what happened is that because my default kernel was the non-xen one, when I updated the xen one, it didn't carry over the hypervisor options.  In point of fact, it also carried over the *wrong* kernel options; it should have carried over the console=ttyS0 instead of the console=ttyS1, but it didn't.

This is probably the case for the reporter, and also what I've seen.  Looked at from that point of view, it's not a regression; it's something that's always been there.

That being said, from the principle of least surprise, the right thing to do here is probably to copy the options from the newest xen hypervisor and kernel (if it exists) to the xen hypervisor kernel that is currently being installed.  While you still may get it wrong, I would say that you have a much better chance of getting it right than we currently have.

Chris Lalancette

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