Run PV in PVH container

From Xen
Revision as of 17:06, 14 May 2018 by Lars.kurth (talk | contribs)

Xen 4.11 support running of unmodified legacy PV-only guest to be run in PVH mode. This allows users to run old, PV-only distros. This simplifies management and reduces the surface of attack significantly. Note that slide 15 of this presentation gives an architectural overview of PVH shim.

Converting a PV config to a PVH shim config

  • Shutdown VM
  • Remove any reference to builder (e.g., builder="generic")
  • Add the following two lines:
 type="pvh"
 pvshim=1
  • Restart VM

Converting a PV config to a PVH config

Icon Info.png If you have a kernel capable of booting PVH, then PVH mode is both faster and more secure than PV or PVH-shim mode.


  • Shutdown VM
  • Remove any reference to builder (e.g., builder="generic")
  • Add the following two lines:
 type="pvh"
  • Restart VM