[ANNOUNCE] kvm-76 release

[Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>]

A fairly significant release.  First the caveat:

   kvm-76 userspace will not work with the kvm modules supplied by Linux 
2.6.24 or below.  Note that you can still use the external module 
provided by this release (or earlier ones) with Linux 2.6.16 and above, 
so this should not affect normal use.  If this confuses you, ignore this 
statement.

Now the goodies:

   Significant performance improvements the new out-of-sync mode (by 
Marcelo, based on ideas in Xen) reduces the vmexit rate on hosts without 
npt or ept.

   Much improved scsi and usb support, courtesy qemu upstream

   Kernel support for device assignment (userspace part still to come, 
so don't get too excited)

Live migration, which has recently regressed, ought to be fixed as well.

Enjoy,

Changes from kvm-75:
- merge qemu-svn
   - improved usb support
   - vnc improvements
   - pass uuid to guest
   - scsi improvements
- change virtio-blk to guest-endian configuration (Liu Yu)
- add 'call near absolute' to x86 emulator and testsuite (Mohammed Gamal)
- drop support for kernel memory allocation (Glauber Costa)
- avoid fiddling with ISA mappings (Jan Kiszka)
   - improves debugging support
- fix external module build on 2.6.22 hosts
- make kernel and userspace memory slot count agree (Sheng Yang)
- add 'cmp' to x86 emulator testsuite (Mohammed Gamal)
- allow 'make sync' from toplevel directory
- external module compatibility for get_user_pages_fast() api (Jan Kiszka)
- correct mtrr setup with >= 4GB RAM (Alex Williamson)
- fix ia64 boot with acpi enabled (Xiantao Zhang)
- initialize userspace kvm context (Uri Lublin)
- fix ia64 with >= 3GB RAM (Xiantao Zhang)
- avoid allocating translated code buffer when using kvm
- simplify memory registration (Glauber Costa)
- support kvmtrace with external module (Eduardo Habkost)
- ia64 init code simplification (Jes Sorensen)
- ia64 external module compatibility with older kernels (Xiantao Zhang)
- fix live migration due to slot number getting lost (Uri Lublin)
- prevent live migration if a device is missing on the target (Uri Lublin)
- fix include-compat/asm symlinks (Uri Lublin)
- do not execute halted vcpus (Marcelo Tosatti)
- fix global tlb flushes with NPT (Joerg Roedel)
- fix preemption error on real mode emulation
- fix page aging with EPT (Sheng Yang)
- simplify locking around ppc shadow tlb page access (Hollis Blanchard)
- cleanup redundant vmcs read (Jan Kiszka)
- fix 64-bit jmp instruction emulation
- move vmx msr definitions to common code
- better support for instructions that reference the accumulator
   (Guillaume Thouvenin)
- add cmp acc, imm instruction emulation (Guillaume Thouvenin)
- kernel support for device assignment
   (Allen Kay, Amit Shah, Weidong Han, Ben-Ami Yassour)
- switch to using get_user_pages_fast() (Marcelo Tosatti)
   - nice speedup on 2.6.27+ hosts
- build fix for ia64 (Jes Sorensen)
- code cleanup (Harvey Harrison)
- avoid entering guest after a startup IPI (Gleb Natapov)
- simplify 'push reg' instruction emulation (Guillaume Thouvenin)
- fix error handling on vcpu creation failure (Glauber Costa)
- support Tukwilla ia64 processors (Xiantao Zhang)
- fix tlb flush when converting a large page to small pages (Marcelo 
Tosatti)
- out-of-sync shadow (Marcelo Tosatti)
- reduce inter-processor interrupt generation when using the PIC
   (Marcelo Tosatti)



Notes:
     If you use the modules bundled with kvm-76, you can use any version
of Linux from 2.6.16 upwards.  You may also use kvm-76 userspace with
the kvm modules provided by Linux 2.6.25 or above.  Some features may
only be available in newer releases.

http://kvm.qumranet.com


-- 
I have a truly marvellous patch that fixes the bug which this
signature is too narrow to contain.