Re: KVM and 32-bit hosts -- still supposed to work?

[Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>]

On 07/01/2009 08:57 AM, Duck wrote:
> I'm on 32-bit Linux, kernel 2.6.27.7-smp. When I moved from kvm-83 to 
> kvm-87 plus kvm-kmod-devel-87, my Linux host VMs ran fine. But my XP0 
> host simply ran too slowly to be useable at all, and my Windows 7 host 
> wouldn't boot -- just crashed and restarted early in the boot process.

Are you sure kvm was loaded?  "too slowly" often means qemu is emulating.

Check 'info kvm' in the monitor.

> Seeing the module version "-devel-87" I tried kvm-87 with the old 
> kvm-83 kernel module (I have no idea whether this is supposed to work) 
> and my XP image worked better, but a task such as opening Device 
> Manager (to see if any hardware has changed) took several _minutes_ 
> (it should take a second or so)) and still didn't work correctly.
>
> Kvm-87 with the -83 kernel module also persuaded Windows 7 to boot, to 
> report "new devices installed', and thereafter to work with kvm-87 
> plus kvm-kmod-devel-87. (Don't you love Windows's driver inflexibility 
> :-)
>
> So I presume that this is all down to virtual hardware changes since -83.
>
> Before I rebuild my tired old XP0 image, however, and adopt kvm-87 for 
> evermore, I just want to know if it's _supposed_ to work on 32-bit 
> (Avi's post about the broken 32-bit compile of -87 due to no 32-bit 
> test build system seemed to imply that 32-bit hosts are considered 
> passe).
>
> Or should I stick with the older kvm until I upgrade my OS to 64-bit?

kvm is supported on 32-bit hosts.  Unfortunately since moving to 
kvm-autotest I no longer test on 32-bit, I'll try to improve the 
situation there.

If someone has spare cycles and can run kvm-autotest on their hardware, 
that would improve kvm quality measurably.

-- 
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function