Virtualization

[Javier Perez]

Hi
I am sorry if it has been asked before, but could not come up with the
search terms to look it and I have not seen discussed on the WIKIs

I am totally noob to virtualization and I was planning to start learning
myself.
I have a dual boot system (FC12, Win2k SP4).

My question is ,If I want to convert it to a virtualized system, FC12 as the
host system, win2k as a guest OS, do I have to
reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then install win2k, or can I just
install yum install the virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
the already isntalled win2k ?

Thanks!

JP

[Kwan Lowe]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Javier Perez  wrote:
> Hi
> I am sorry if it has been asked before, but could not come up with the
> search terms to look it and I have not seen discussed on the WIKIs
>
> I am totally noob to virtualization and I was planning to start learning
> myself.
> I have a dual boot system (FC12, Win2k SP4).
>
> My question is ,If I want to convert it to a virtualized system, FC12 as the
> host system, win2k as a guest OS, do I have to
> reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then install win2k, or can I just
> install yum install the virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> the already isntalled win2k ?

You don't need to reinstall.. Just add the virt packages.

There are some considerations when building a virtual host though...
For example, I separate virtual storage VGs from my OS volume group.
No requirement to do so, but it's easier to do certain operations with
separate VGs.

[Bill Davidsen]

Javier Perez wrote:
> Hi
> I am sorry if it has been asked before, but could not come up with the 
> search terms to look it and I have not seen discussed on the WIKIs
>
> I am totally noob to virtualization and I was planning to start learning 
> myself.
> I have a dual boot system (FC12, Win2k SP4).
>
> My question is ,If I want to convert it to a virtualized system, FC12 as 
> the host system, win2k as a guest OS, do I have to
> reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then install win2k, or can I just 
> install yum install the virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> the already isntalled win2k ?

I haven't done it in a year or so, but you should just be able to add the kvm 
and go. You have to decide if you will use the qemu-kvm from the command line 
(much easier than the virtlib folk want you to know) or virtlib, or vmware, 
virtualbox, or any of the others.

Worked with FC10 and XP, don't have that setup any more.

[Petrus de Calguarium]

Javier Perez wrote:
> do I have to reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then
> install win2k, or can I just install yum install the
> virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> the already isntalled win2k ?

In my experience, this does not work (I have tried to use a 
windows version installed on another partition -- to no 
avail). Maybe you can get it to work?

Generally, you will install qemu, qemu-kvm &c., then you 
will run qemu-img to create a qcow2 disk image (you probably 
want about 15-20G, depending on how many windows programs 
you want to install) and then you will install windows on 
that disk image.

Then, when you are running fedora, you can use qemu-kvm (not 
as root) to boot the version of windows that is installed on 
the disk image. Windows will probably need about 1024 memory 
to run well. You should keep about half of your memory for 
fedora, of course.

Summary:

Create image:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 windows.img 15G

Install Windows from a cdrom (if you have an upgrade version 
of windows, this requires changing disks using commands from 
the console; ctrl-alt-1/ctrl-alt-2 to switch console and 
emulation screens):
qemu-kvm -m 1024 -cdrom /dev/sr0 -boot d -soundhw all -hda 
windows.img

Boot virtual machine:
qemu-kvm -m 1024 -boot c -vga std -soundhw all -localtime -
hda windows.img

[David Bartmess]

On 4/2/2010 2:06 PM, Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> Javier Perez wrote:
> > do I have to reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then
> > install win2k, or can I just install yum install the
> > virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> > the already isntalled win2k ?

I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no 
matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?

"sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...

[jack craig]

try a yum list | grep kvm

i see only qemu-kvm..

On 04/02/2010 03:14 PM, David Bartmess wrote:
> On 4/2/2010 2:06 PM, Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> > Javier Perez wrote:
> > > do I have to reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then
> > > install win2k, or can I just install yum install the
> > > virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> > > the already isntalled win2k ?
>
> I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no
> matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?
>
> "sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...

[Suvayu Ali]

On Friday 02 April 2010 03:14 PM, David Bartmess wrote:
> I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no
> matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?
>
> "sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...

Whenever in doubt about package names you can try commands like these,

$ yum search kvm
$ yum list *kvm*
$ yum whatprovides */bin/*kvm

And then there are also tools like repoquery which come with yum-utils. 
Yum is one of the most powerful tools one can have for package management.

:)

[David Bartmess]

On 4/2/2010 4:37 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
> On Friday 02 April 2010 03:14 PM, David Bartmess wrote:
> > I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no
> > matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?
> >
> > "sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...
>
> Whenever in doubt about package names you can try commands like these,
>
> $ yum search kvm
> $ yum list *kvm*
> $ yum whatprovides */bin/*kvm
>
> And then there are also tools like repoquery which come with yum-utils.
> Yum is one of the most powerful tools one can have for package management.
>
> :)

I don't find kvm anywhere. Is there a specific repository I need to add 
to my list?

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 04/03/2010 05:19 AM, David Bartmess wrote:
> I don't find kvm anywhere. Is there a specific repository I need to add 
> to my list?

KVM is a kernel module.  There is no separate package or binary called
KVM.  The user space tool is qemu-kvm.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Getting_started_with_virtualization

Rahul

[Suvayu Ali]

On 2 April 2010 16:49, David Bartmess  wrote:
> On 4/2/2010 4:37 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
> > On Friday 02 April 2010 03:14 PM, David Bartmess wrote:
> > > I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no
> > > matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?
> > >
> > > "sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...
> >
> > Whenever in doubt about package names you can try commands like these,
> >
> > $ yum search kvm
> > $ yum list *kvm*
> > $ yum whatprovides */bin/*kvm
> >
> > And then there are also tools like repoquery which come with yum-utils.
> > Yum is one of the most powerful tools one can have for package management.
> >
> > :)
>
> I don't find kvm anywhere. Is there a specific repository I need to add
> to my list?

The last command should have returned you the proper package name,
qemu-system. :) And as Rahul said, kvm is part of the kernel. What you
get from the package are the qemu tools to make use of the kvm module
in the kernel. A small note, you need to be root to start using the
kvm module. Once that is done, any user on the system can use the vm.
> --
> "Dingo" Dave Bartmess

GL

[Jerry Feldman]

On 04/02/2010 01:46 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
> Hi
> I am sorry if it has been asked before, but could not come up with the
> search terms to look it and I have not seen discussed on the WIKIs
>
> I am totally noob to virtualization and I was planning to start
> learning myself.
> I have a dual boot system (FC12, Win2k SP4).
>
> My question is ,If I want to convert it to a virtualized system, FC12
> as the host system, win2k as a guest OS, do I have to
> reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then install win2k, or can I just
> install yum install the virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> the already isntalled win2k ?

Most of your questions have been answered. Neither KVM nor Virtualbox
will run windows installed in an existing partition (AFAIK), BUT you can
do a PtoV on your Windows 2K system. Probably the best way to do this is
to download the VMWare PtoV tool
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/. This generates a VMWare vmdk
file, but both KVM (QEMU) and Virtualbox have tools to convert this to
native formats. Also, note that Virtualbox has instructions on how to
convert physical to virtual on their web site, but I would recommend the
free VMWare tool.

The way virtual machine managers work is that they create a container
file that represent a virtual hard drive. This file sits somewhere on
your Linux file system. For my laptop, I have them on a 160GB USB drive.

Once you have Win2K installed under KVM or Virtualbox, you can free up
that partition to use for your Linux system.

[Bill Davidsen]

David Bartmess wrote:
> On 4/2/2010 2:06 PM, Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> > Javier Perez wrote:
> > > do I have to reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then
> > > install win2k, or can I just install yum install the
> > > virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> > > the already isntalled win2k ?
>
> I'm on F12, and I've tried to install kvm via yum, but yum says no 
> matching packages... Is this a F13 thing?
>
> "sudo yum install kvm" returns nothing...

yum install qemu*

[Bill Davidsen]

Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> Javier Perez wrote:
> > do I have to reformat my HD, reinstall FC12, and then
> > install win2k, or can I just install yum install the
> > virtual parts for kvm and have it start as a guest
> > the already isntalled win2k ?
>
> In my experience, this does not work (I have tried to use a 
> windows version installed on another partition -- to no 
> avail). Maybe you can get it to work?

This is how I got it to work. I suspect that it's dangerous at boot time, use at 
your own risk.

- create a qcow of the whole drive
   qemu-img -b /dev/sda -f qcow2 -b /dev/sda dcopy.img
- start the image
   qemu-kvm -m 1000 -hda dcopy.img
- boot Windows

After testing that, enable whatever network, sound, etc, you wish

If you are *really* brave just put the whole disk in a VM and don't boot another 
copy of Linux

qemu-kvm -m 1000 -hda /dev/sda

That "worked for me" in FC10 and XP.

[Javier Perez]

Thanks Jerry and everyone else who answered!

I started to virtualized but found out my CPU did not have vmx (E5200 :( )
It will be awhile until I replace the CPU to something with vmx, and start
to practice it,
but I am studying this asiduously to implement it.

I´ll let you know how it went!

Thanks!

[Jerry Feldman]

On 04/08/2010 10:03 AM, Javier Perez wrote:
> Thanks Jerry and everyone else who answered!
>
> I started to virtualized but found out my CPU did not have vmx (E5200 :( )
> It will be awhile until I replace the CPU to something with vmx, and
> start to practice it,
> but I am studying this asiduously to implement it.
>
> I´ll let you know how it went!

Ok. Virtualbox, VMWare, and QEMU (without KVM)  will run fine on a
non-virtualized CPU. Additionally, not only do you need a CPU with the
virtualization assist but you also need support for it in the BIOS. All
AMD 64-bit CPU chips and most (but not all) Intel chips have the
virtualization assistance.

[Ralph Blach]

You might have to go into you bios and turn on the bit,

Chip

Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On 04/08/2010 10:03 AM, Javier Perez wrote:
> > Thanks Jerry and everyone else who answered!
> >
> > I started to virtualized but found out my CPU did not have vmx (E5200 :( )
> > It will be awhile until I replace the CPU to something with vmx, and
> > start to practice it,
> > but I am studying this asiduously to implement it.
> >
> > I´ll let you know how it went!
>
> Ok. Virtualbox, VMWare, and QEMU (without KVM)  will run fine on a
> non-virtualized CPU. Additionally, not only do you need a CPU with the
> virtualization assist but you also need support for it in the BIOS. All
> AMD 64-bit CPU chips and most (but not all) Intel chips have the
> virtualization assistance.

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Monday 19 April 2010 15:57:48 Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On 04/08/2010 10:03 AM, Javier Perez wrote:
> > I started to virtualized but found out my CPU did not have vmx (E5200 :(
> > ) It will be awhile until I replace the CPU to something with vmx, and
> > start to practice it,
> > but I am studying this asiduously to implement it.
>
> Ok. Virtualbox, VMWare, and QEMU (without KVM)  will run fine on a
> non-virtualized CPU.

This depends on how you define "run fine". Virtualbox and VMWare have kernel 
modules (that is, if you can compile the VMWare ones for the latest kernels) 
that will enable decent performance on non-virtualized CPU. QEMU doesn't have 
it, and will typically be extremely slow.
> Additionally, not only do you need a CPU with the
> virtualization assist but you also need support for it in the BIOS. All
> AMD 64-bit CPU chips and most (but not all) Intel chips have the
> virtualization assistance.

For Intel this is a hit-or-miss thing, there was an earlier thread where I 
ranted about it quite a lot.

Best, :-)
Marko