KVM

From openSUSE

For more introduction to KVM see the KVM article of Wikipedia

KVM consists of kernel modules for virtualizing Processors and a modified version of QEMU for virtualizing devices.

Hardware requirements

KVM requires a recent Intel or AMD CPU with support for Intel VT or AMD VMX enabled in the BIOS.

Check if your processor has virtualization support (If not, check CPU revision and BIOS settings):

Note: Some Intel Core 2 Duos it will show vmx instead of VT

Installation

After you have added one of the repositories below, install the packages qemu, kvm and kvm-kmp-"kernelversion", where "kernelversion" must match the version of your kernel (i.e. if your kernel is from the package kernel-default, you will install kvm-default; uname -r will tell you which kernel package you are running). Note: kvm-kmp-"kernelversion" in the default openSUSE 11.0 repository is incompatible with the updated kernel. It is necessary to install the version from the repositories below, or you will not be able to load the installed kvm modules, and will get kernel symbols mismatches.

Regularily updated repositories with builds for the current SUSE Linux distributions:

• Repo with latest released KVM version

Steps to start KVM

1. create the image to hold the guest OS (10G size in this case):

2. insert KVM kernel modules in the kernel if you compiled them as modules:

3. copy opensuse dvd/cd on your hard disk:

4. install the quest:

  if qemu-kvm is not available use qemu-system-x86_64

5. start your new installed system:

  if qemu-kvm is not available use qemu-system-x86_64

Do you want more?

• use -m parameter to specify the amount of RAM for virtual machine (default 128MB)
• use -incoming [protocol:params] if you want to move your virtual machine on the other machine
• check KVM web site for more documentation

Note: step 3: copy CD/DVD can be avoided and the /dev/dvd can be directly passed to qemu.