Re: qemu-kvm

Baruch Even
2006-11-14T09:35:37Z

* Simon Kagstrom <simon.kagstrom-6Uc+yI3S9P8@public.gmane.org> [061114 11:30]:
> At Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:50:23 +0200,
> Avi Kivity wrote:
> >
> > Baruch Even wrote:
> > > Can the Qemu built with KVM support run without KVM? Froma quick perusal
> > > of the kvm.patch it seems that there are places where USE_KVM implies a
> > > qemu-panic without any runtime conditionals.
> >
> > qemu-kvm.patch is an older release. With the new release, it should be
> > possible to run without kvm. Let me know (or better, send patches) if
> > there are any such places in kvm-2.
>
> One thing I've thought about (and quickly hacked on) is to "detect"
> the presense of KVM and use it if it is there and use "plain" qemu if
> it is not. The question is if this is behavior that the rest of you
> would like, I'll send a patch if so.

That would be best IMO. In this way qemu will just work and it can run
(much?) faster if the user has kvm. Though this means some loss in
branding for kvm as users are less likely to know they are running under
kvm.

In usch a mode the user should be notified if KVM is not found and if
KVM is found but the machine doesn't have VT support. Though I guess the
KVM module will fail to load if there is no VT support in the CPU.

Cheers,
Baruch