FS#13128 - Kernel - Add paravirtualization support for Arch as KVM guest

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Jörg Kriegel (sokoban65) - Thursday, 05 February 2009, 19:16 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Thursday, 12 March 2009, 17:39 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Kernel
Status Closed
Assigned To Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Thomas Bächler (brain0)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Paravirtualization can speed up the guest operation system (ArchLinux) a lot. Unfortunately ArchLinux has disabled some necessary modules/features to enable this for KVM. These are:

CONFIG_KVM_GUEST=y
CONFIG_KVM_CLOCK=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_PCI=m
CONFIG_VIRTIO_BALLOON=m

One have to include virtio-pci and virtio-blk into the initrd to boot from the virtual block device. The first HDD is then /dev/vda. An ArchLinux guest with paravirtualized HDD and network (tap) can be started like:

qemu-kvm -m 256 -net nic,vlan=0,model=virtio,macaddr=00:16:3e:00:00:01 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0 \
-drive file=my-hdd.img,if=virtio,boot=on

Existing VM's can be converted. It's like converting from /dev/hda to /dev/sda with earlier kernels. So please enable paravirtualization with KVM in the kernel if there are no other drawbacks.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Thursday, 12 March 2009, 17:39 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Additional comments about closing:  2.6.28.7-2
Comment by Attila (attila) - Saturday, 07 February 2009, 09:22 GMT
+1 I test this in kvm with my vm's (debian and opensuse) and it would be very nice if the arch kernel supports this too because using virtio_blk is realy faster.

@sokoban65 Thanks for the hints about it.
Comment by Attila (attila) - Monday, 09 February 2009, 16:11 GMT
I see that this bug get assigned and so i want to inform about this: I compile in my vm an own kernel package with the settings in the kernel config as suggested from sokoban65 and the only sideeffect is that it runs faster. If you want some other tests say it.
Comment by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Friday, 13 February 2009, 09:33 GMT
will be addressed for .29 series, changing things in processor have the potential of rebuilding of all binary modules.

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