a (bad) kvm story from a plain user

Slohm Gadaburi
2007-08-14T19:22:40Z

Hello list.

I want to share my first kvm experience with you and ask for
your advice.

I run up-to-date Ubuntu 7.04 (kernel 2.6.20) on AMD processor.

I did apt-get installed kvm (which gave me the kvm-amd.ko module),
and qemu packages.

I modprobed kvm-adm.ko with no hassle.

and then I followed the HOWTO page on the kvm wiki -
created an qemu image and booted off a cd for installing RH9.0
(yeah, antique).

But the installation was sooooo slow. about 3 hours !

How can I know if the qemu I ran took advantage of the kvm module ?

I ran /usr/bin/qemu as I didn't have /usr/local/kvm/bin/qemu like the HOWTO
mentioned (as I didn't compiled the kvm bundle myself...).

So maybe the qemu I ran was just plain qemu, without the kvm changes ?

if so, then how could I have the kvm-changed qemu binaires ?

I even tried to compile the kvm bundle myself (i took the one that
is recommended for kernel 2.6.20, as the wiki says),
but alas, the ./configure shouted I don't have gcc 3.x
(which is indeed true as an up-to-date system today have gcc 4.x).

so was there another way to compile the kvm bundle ?

last question - the ./configure script has the option reflecting whether the
kernel is patched or not. if i download the cutting edge rc3 kernel,
should i add the --patched flag or not ?

thank you
hope u could help me
slohm