[Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/6] Support for the Kernel Virtual Machine interface (v2)

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

KVM is a Linux interface for providing userspace interfaces for accelerated
virtualization.  It has been included since 2.6.20 and supports Intel VT and
AMD-V.  Ports are under way for ia64, embedded PowerPC, and s390.

This set of patches provide basic support for KVM in QEMU.  It does not include
all of the changes in the KVM QEMU branch (such as virtio, live migration,
extboot, etc).  However, if we can get these first portions merged, I will
follow up with the remainder of the changes and I believe we can be fully
merged in the very near future.

The first 5 patches of this series are not KVM specific but are critical fixes
for KVM to be functional.  The 6th patch provides KVM support.  The goal in
providing KVM support is to make sure that when KVM support is not compiled in,
the code paths aren't changed at all.  I hope this makes it very easy to merge.

KVM moves very quickly, so I'd appreciate if these patches can be reviewed as
soon as possible as it's going to be tough to keep them in sync with the main
KVM tree while they're out of tree.

To enable KVM support, you have to have to libkvm installed.  You should also
explicitly specify the location of your kernel tree (with KVM headers) with the
--kernel-path option.  We will improve libkvm such that this isn't required in
future versions.

KVM also has an enhanced Bochs BIOS.  I've tested these patches with out it and
it's not strictly necessary for basic functionality.  I would recommend pulling
in a copy of it though as it has useful fixes even in the absence of KVM.

A very large number of people have contributed to these patches with Avi Kivity
being the main developer of this support.  For a full listing of contributers,
please consult the KVM ChangeLog[1].

Since v2, I've incorporated all the feedback received for v1.  I was able to
drop the option ROM refactoring too but introduced a new patch to fix an
obvious bug with the VMware vga initialization pointed out by Paul Brook.

[1] http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/ChangeLog