FS#7337 - paravirtualization support

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Friday, 01 June 2007, 14:29 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Tuesday, 21 August 2007, 20:29 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Kernel
Status Closed
Assigned To Alexander Baldeck (kth5)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version 2007.05 Duke
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Please enable CONFIG_PARAVIRT (and then CONFIG_VMI too).
This will allow to greatly speedup Arch in KVM and VMware.
For real (non-virtualized) machines the performance slowdown is neglible:
http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/paravirtualization/performance.html
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/virtualization/2007-March/006003.html
This task depends upon

Closed by  Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Tuesday, 21 August 2007, 20:29 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Comment by Pierre Schmitz (Pierre) - Saturday, 02 June 2007, 09:23 GMT
Afaik this will break the nvidia drivers. Most users wont need paravirtualization (in addition to this you need a brand new cpu to use this).
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Saturday, 02 June 2007, 12:02 GMT
Hm, AFAIR the breakage is because paravirt_ops is allowed for GPL-only code, so that's a kernel that blocks non-free drivers.
OK, so it's a bit early time to implement this now...
Comment by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Saturday, 02 June 2007, 15:13 GMT
its only 64bit it will be implemented on x64 arch later
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Sunday, 03 June 2007, 11:03 GMT
Here is a Debian's discussion:debian-kernel@lists.debian.org/msg26349.html"> http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-kernel@lists.debian.org/msg26349.html
that mentioned good news:
From "More stuff for 2.6.22" <http://lwn.net/Articles/233315/>:
Numerous changes to the paravirt_ops methods have been made.
Additionally, paravirt_ops is no longer a GPL-only export.
Comment by Alexander Baldeck (kth5) - Sunday, 03 June 2007, 11:09 GMT
I've been trying to enable this option in the current stock kernel source for 2.6.21.3. Right now, this feature has not made it into the release and thus I don't think it's wise to add it yet.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Sunday, 03 June 2007, 11:31 GMT
I absolutely don't understand why it's "only 64bit".
It is for i686 too!
Paravirtualization support is needed on client side. KVM can run paravirtualized i686 kernel on real x86_64 machine (which in turn can run either x86_64 or i686 Arch).
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Monday, 18 June 2007, 15:58 GMT
Agreed Roman! I'd like this on i686 as well.
What's the current status? Waiting for 2.6.22?

Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Tuesday, 19 June 2007, 07:51 GMT
@Dale:
AFAIK paravirtualization support (paravirt_ops and VMI) will be in our 2.6.22 kernel.
KVM progress can be seen here: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7331

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