dual booting

[William Park]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
> To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
> Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 11:14:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [TLUG]: dual booting
> 
> On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 10:53:33PM -0800, William Park wrote:
> > Okey, I tried out 3 virtualizations, and here is my comments...
> > 
> > 1. VirtualBox -- Cleanest website.  You download "doc" (pdf or html), and
> > ".run" binary.  After installing guest OS, you need to install "Guest 
> Additions"
> > within the guest OS, if you want better video/mouse support.  CentOS-5.4
> > was too old as guest OS, and OpenSUSE-11.2 hangs on install.  Other than
> > that, Slackware32/64, Fedora-12, Ubuntu-9.10, and Windows 2003/7 work
> > okey.
> > 
> > 2. KVM -- Website and documentations were confusing.  But, it compiles and
> > installs on Slackware, so it should work for other distro.  Since it doesn't 
> have
> > GUI frontend, you have to type command-line, which is not as bad as it sounds.
> > However, KVM is too slow, so much so that it's useless in practice.
> 
> KVM is the fastest there is, unless you tried running it without the
> hardware support (or module loaded) in which case it switches to qemu's
> software emulation (which is very slow).
> 
> Check the start message to see that kvm support in kernel is actually
> detected.  Recent kernels should come with kvm support already that
> should work fine, older kernels need modules compiled.  For example I
> have this:
> ii  kvm-modules-2.6.26-2-amd64  85+dfsg-4+2.6.26-16  kvm modules for Linux 
> (kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64).
> 
> 2.6.26 is a bit old after all.
> 
> To check kvm support is working:
> # kvm --help|head -n 1
> QEMU PC emulator version 0.10.0 (kvm-85), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice 
> Bellard

Similar to mine:
     $ /usr/local/kvm/bin/qemu-system-x86_64  --help | head -n 1
     QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.1 (qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

> 
> That means kvm userspace based on qemu 0.10.0 and KVM kernel module version 85.
> 
> Also:
> 
> # dmesg |grep kvm
> [ 1759.219247] loaded kvm module (kvm-85)

    $ lsmod | grep kvm
    kvm_amd                34271  0
    kvm                   248305  1 kvm_amd

    $ dmesg | grep kvm
    kvm: Nested Virtualization enabled

And, my cpu has AMD-V (svm).

    $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep svmq
    flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr
                        pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall
                        nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow up rep_good
                        extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm svm extapic cr8_legacy

Maybe AMD is faking something, in order to achieve 45W "low power"
2.4GHz cpu.  Or, maybe, ASUS is faking something on the motherboard.
The fact that it can boot from USB cdrom, but not from USB harddisk,
doesn't inspire confidence.

--William

> 
> When starting kvm it will tell you if it can't use kernel support,
> in which case it will get very very slow.  If your cpu doesn't support
> kvm, then kqemu is a decent option (should perform at least on par
> with vmware).  Again make sure to compile the kqemu modules for your
> kernel and load them or you drop back to software emulation of the cpu
> again, and painful slowness.
> 
> > 3. VMware Player -- Most confusing and useless PR/bullshit website.  If I 
> didn't
> > know I wanted Player, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go.  Anyways,
> > it fails to compile some kernel modules on my Slackware64-13.0 (2.6.32.2 
> kernel).
> > I don't know, because VirtualBox and KVM compiled their modules without any
> > problems.
> 
> VMware is hopeless.  Hasn't worked with new kernels in a while, and they
> don't seem to care until redhat or suse goes to a new kernel.  Also their
> new installer stinks.


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