Re: [GIT PULL] Native Linux KVM tool for 3.1

[Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>]

On 25.07.2011, at 10:30, Pekka Enberg wrote:

> Hi Alexander,
> 
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:
>>> So i wanted to have a lightweight tool that allows me to test KVM and
>>> tools/kvm/ does that very nicely: i type './kvm run' and i can test a
>>> native bzImage (which has some virtualization options enabled as
>>> well) on the _host_ distro i am running, booting to a text shell
>>> prompt.
>> 
>> I do that all the time.
>> 
>>  $ qemu-kvm -nographic -kernel arch/x86/boot/bzImage -append console=ttyS0
>> 
>> does the exact same thing. If that's too much typing for you, make it a bash alias.
> 
> You know, they said the same thing about oprofile. All you needed to do was to
> write few simple shell scripts to make it work. One of the key
> features of tools/kvm
> is 'as little configuration as possible' and I can assure you that
> bash alias is really
> not a solution for that.

I like perf. Really. But I still don't see why it wouldn't be able to live in its own tree either.

> [ Yes, yes, I know people apparently use virtio-manager for lauching Qemu so
>  they don't need to figure out the setup themselves. But now you have *three*
>  separate components (KVM, Qemu, virtio-manager) which is a completely

Having the split between KVM and user space is necessary. One lives in kernel space, the other one in user space. The split between qemu and virt-manager is something I don't like either. But then again I don't like virt-manager :). But what does this have to do with pulling something into the kernel? And reimplementing something that's already been there?

>  different direction we're taking. Hell, we even went ahead and wrote our own
>  mini-BIOS just to keep things in one unified tree. ]

Yes, making sure that you have even more non-working non-Linux OSs.


Alex