Re: [ANNOUNCE] Native Linux KVM tool

[Anthony Liguori]

On 03/31/2011 12:30 PM, Pekka Enberg wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Weâre proud to announce the native Linux KVM tool!

Neat!

As something of a lesson of history, I'd suggest picking a more unique 
name while it's still a prototype :-)

> The goal of this tool is to provide a clean, from-scratch, lightweight
> KVM host tool implementation that can boot Linux guest images (just a
> hobby, won't be big and professional like QEMU) with no BIOS
> dependencies and with only the minimal amount of legacy device
> emulation.

I see you do provide 16-bit entry points for Linux.  Are you planning on 
paravirtualizing this within Linux to truly eliminate the BIOS dependency?

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Note that this is a development prototype for the time being: there's no
> networking support and no graphics support, amongst other missing
> essentials.
>
> It's great as a learning tool if you want to get your feet wet in
> virtualization land: it's only 5 KLOC of clean C code that can already
> boot a guest Linux image.
>
> Right now it can boot a Linux image and provide you output via a serial
> console, over the host terminal, i.e. you can use it to boot a guest
> Linux image in a terminal or over ssh and log into the guest without
> much guest or host side setup work needed.
>
> 1. To try out the tool, clone the git repository:
>
>    git clone git://github.com/penberg/linux-kvm.git
>
> or alternatively, if you already have a kernel source tree:
>
>    git checkout -b kvm/tool
>    git pull git://github.com/penberg/linux-kvm.git
>
> 2. Compile the tool:
>
>    cd tools/kvm&&  make
>
> 3. Download a raw userspace image:
>
>    wget http://wiki.qemu.org/download/linux-0.2.img.bz2&&;  bunzip2
> linux-0.2.img.bz2
>
> 4. Build a kernel with CONFIG_VIRTIO_BLK=y and
> CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_CONSOLE=y configuration options. Note: also make sure
> you have CONFIG_EXT2_FS or CONFIG_EXT4_FS if you use the above image.
>
> 5. And finally, launch the hypervisor:
>
>    ./kvm --image=linux-0.2.img --kernel=../../arch/x86/boot/bzImage
>
> The tool has been written by Pekka Enberg, Cyrill Gorcunov, and Asias
> He. Special thanks to Avi Kivity for his help on KVM internals and Ingo
> Molnar for all-around support and encouragement!
>
> See the following thread for original discussion for motivation of this
> project:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/962051/focus=962620
>
> 			Pekka
>
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