[mythtv-users] Virtualisation in the home network – ready for mainstream?

[Jarod Wilson]

On Sep 2, 2009, at 6:18 PM, greg pryzby <greg at pryzby.org> wrote:

> Greg Woods wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-09-02 at 12:13 -0400, Jarod Wilson wrote:
>>> lsmod |grep kvm
>> On the work system where things are good, the output is:
>> kvm_intel              39696  3 kvm                   128388  1  
>> kvm_intel
>> When I get home tonight, I'll check the Pentium 4 machine. Am I  
>> correct
>> in assuming that if the machine isn't already using KVM, there's no  
>> way
>> to make it do so because the hardware support it needs is lacking? If
>
> The machine needs to have the hardware assist virt bits on the chip.  
> Check BIOS. AFTER changing in BIOS, you need to turn off the machine  
> (I pull the plug to be sure) and turn it back on. A 'soft restart'  
> doesn't get the BIOS change for virt I have learned, the hard way.

This isn't universally true, but not bad advice just to be sure.  
(Lenovo systems definitely don't properly set the hw virt enable bits  
w/o a cold boot).

> MOST machines that are server quality and less than 3 years old,  
> have the bits. For desktops or older, it is hit or miss.

Its pretty much "hit" even with almost all recent desktops and laptops  
I've seen, save those with atom procs. I have around ten machines  
between home and the office w/hw virt extensions, only two of which  
are server-class.

> IIRC you MUST be 64bit also. You can run a 32bit guest, but 64bit  
> host is needed. I maybe mis-remembering though.

You're mis-remembering. The 32-bit Intel Core line are hw virt capable.


>
>> so, will VirtualBox still be usable on such a machine?
>
> that could work. performance might not be as good.

It'll be better than running qemu w/o kvm support.

-- 
Jarod Wilson