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

[greg pryzby]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> 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).

Must be some of the older intel stuff I have access to also, because I 
spent way too long saying, SET in BIOS, doesn't see it? yep, set in 
BIOS, etc :/

>> 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.

Yep. I didn't want to get into the atom and other 'power saving' cpus. 
If I said, < 3 years old you are probably good, I would have heard about 
it ;)

>> 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.

Must just be my day job things then. I know we only support 64bit I 
couldn't recall if it was hardware or us that was making the decision.

>>> 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.

running the native machine is better than qemu ;) But that isn't the 
point on qemu, is it :P

-- 
greg pryzby                              greg at pryzby dot org
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