From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Cam Macdonell Subject: Re: User Question Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:23:37 -0600 Message-ID: <49DCDD99.20804@cs.ualberta.ca> References: <49DCC3A9.9070802@bayarea.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org To: Randy Broman Return-path: Received: from fleet.cs.ualberta.ca ([129.128.22.22]:54881 "EHLO fleet.cs.ualberta.ca" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753991AbZDHRXr (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Apr 2009 13:23:47 -0400 Received: from fleet.cs.ualberta.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by fleet-spampd (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F4512801E for ; Wed, 8 Apr 2009 11:23:38 -0600 (MDT) In-Reply-To: <49DCC3A9.9070802@bayarea.net> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Randy Broman wrote: > I'm running Kubuntu Jaunty 9.04 on an AMD Phenom II 910, with a custom > 2.6.28 kernel. I want to install KVM with a Windows XP guest. Apologies > I'm confused as to exactly what to install .... > > -I can (should?) apt-get install KVM and/or QEMU from the Jaunty archives. > -I can configure KVM into my custom kernel using CONFIG_KVM=m, > CONFIG_KVM_AMD=m and a couple other .config options. > -I can download, compile and install kvm-84 from source for my kernel > On this basis I would presumably invoke qemu-system-x86_64 from > the install directory. Hi Randy, I follow the third method. Compiling the kvm-84 tarball will build both the kernel modules and the userspace qemu-system-x64_84 for you and install them for you. > This is a home not production system, and I'd like to get the best guest > performance possible. Getting the best performance possible will depend on your use of devices. For network performance do not use the "user" network stack it's really slow; use vde or bridged networking. Docs for this are here (http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Networking). VDE has no description (yet), but google will help. > I'm a little confused between KVM and QEMU ... I > know there's a KVM kernel module(s) plus the facility to run the virtual > guest, but I'm unsure which of the above choices to use. Qemu is an system emulator that emulate numerous architectures. With KVM, Qemu is used in the userspace to manage virtual devices and allocate memory for the VMs (no processor emulation is done; Qemu is only used for x86 on x86 within KVM), but kernel modules are added to take advantage of hardware virtualization support. It's well known that the names of executables can be confusing :) > Would appreciate recommendations and/or pointers to useful docs. linux-kvm.org is the place to start. Specifically the how-to section. Good luck, Cam