Virtualization In Linux Kernel 2.6.20

mcalwell writes with an article about the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (or KVM for short) in the release candidate Linux 2.6.20 kernel. From the article: "[T]he Linux 2.6.20 kernel will include a full virtualization (not para-virtualization) solution. [KVM] is a GPL software project that has been developed and sponsored by Qumranet. In this article we are offering a brief overview of the KVM for Linux as well as offering up in-house performance numbers as we compare KVM to other virtualization solutions such as QEMU Accelerator and Xen."

Simple Q: will this run Win XP as a guest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cutting right to the chase here, if I have this new kernel, and a CPU that supports it (only the latest generation from Intel and AMD do), I should be able to install Windows XP as a guest OS and run it in a window on my Linux machine? That would be very cool and could really help the adoption of Linux. I know I can do something like this with VMWare right now, but if it's built in to the kernel that would be even better. And yes I would have to buy a new machine with one of these current-generation CPUs to be able to do that, but it's worth it to get that anyway.

At the same time, we have Wine making great progress and able to run a whole bunch of useful Windows apps without even needing any virtualization, so Linux is soon going to assimilate everything!

Acronym overload

[phoebe]

Couldn't they just try to use a different acronym, how about KbVM?

Mod me down!

[EvanED]

Okay, I read the charts wrong because I'm apparently an idiot. Native times are the first bar in each graph.

Though VMWare would still have been nice...

Call me when...

[hondamankev]

they can virtualize XP under linux, can have hardware graphics acceleration, and full dx9+ support.

Re:Oddness in kernel release cycle

[Builder]

That information is outdated really. The main developers decided that we wouldn't have a development kernel anymore, and would instead just develop in the stable tree. Genius! Now we have all the benefits of an unstable API / ABI combined with the benefits of flaky support... Go team!

Mod... Parent... Up

[Builder]

I feel your pain, deeply! A stable API / ABI is absolutely vital for ISV support and the new development model means that you can only get this if you're prepared to pay a large amount of money for your distribution. I don't want to have to pay $1500 for RHEL, but that's the only way I can run an Oracle dev server on a quad box with 16GB ram. The amusing thing is that RHEL is the ONLY piece of software I have to pay for on that machine - our site license gives us free licenses for dev and DR :)

Anyone other than SLES or RHEL is a second class Linux citizen today. Without vendor support you can forget about trying to run a stable Linux kernel anymore. Bring back the old odd / even split!

Re:kqemu?

[popeydotcom]

On Linux it's easy to tell if you have VT..

egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

if that returns anything you have VT, if it doesn't, you don't.

Here's what I get on my desktop (Intel Core 2 Duo).

alan@wopr:~$ egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm

There is a list on the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization) of supported chips.

Re:Mod... Parent... Up

[gmack]

The patches that each comes up with the backport specific security features will be different, if only slightly. The patches that each comes up with to backport a highly requested feature will be slightly different. Over time these slight differences will add up to become real differences between the distros.

Distros should NEVER backport features. That's the whole point of the new development system. If you want a stable kernel stay with the point release your on and just add the security/stabillity patches. If you want new features use a newer kernel.

That right there was the exact problem with the old even/odd split. The time between the two ended up being so great that people/vendors would start backporting features and destabilizing the "stable series" kernel.

Distros forking the kernel has always been an annoyance so it's nothing new either. I've been playing the "wich distro has the drivers I need" game since 2.0.x and it got to the point where I just never use distro kernels anymore I just compile my own and add that to the installer.

Re:Call me when...

[rbanffy]

He probably wants to run Linux for work and still be able to run GameOS in his/her spare time.

quit your FUD, it's getting old

[r00t]

See unistd.h for the stable API. Combined with the SVR4 ELF specification, that gives you a stable ABI. It's been a damn long time since Linux lost an old system call. Old a.out binaries from a dozen years ago still run fine. BTW, outside the kernel even glibc is doing well; the biggest problem has been the C++ library, mainly because the C++ committee kept adding features.

I think your real complaint is that out-of-tree drivers are unsupported. Tough luck. This will never change. I suggest that you get your drivers into the tree, where other people can review them for bugs (afraid of that? embarrased?) and update them as the rest of the kernel changes.

Re:Multicomputing

[charlesnw]

If there was a nice piece of software that could let me run all of my nodes as VM servers and let users dynamically provision VMs and boot specified images as cluster nodes with different specs for development and production runs, that would be great. Anyone know of such software?

Yes. Its called vmware server the paid version :)