Re: [ANNOUNCE] Native Linux KVM tool

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Sun Apr 03 2011 - 05:17:55 EST


On 04/03/2011 11:51 AM, Pekka Enberg wrote:
Hi Anthony,

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 11:38 PM, Anthony Liguori<anthony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 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?

No, we aren't planning that at the moment. We're trying to support
out-of-the-box distro kernels when possible which is why we went for
E820 emulation in the first place. The only hard requirement for
bootung userspace is CONFIG_VIRTIO_BLK but otherwise kernel binaries
should just work.

Furthermore, as the BIOS glue is really really small, I'm not sure if
we need to get rid of it completely. Do you have some scenario in mind
where paravirt solution would help?

It would be a easier to support the bios than implement everything it provides in a different way. SMP support, cpu hotplug, device hotplug, NUMA, and probably other features all rely on the bios.

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

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