32bit guest on 64bit host, should it work?

[Eric Blake]

On 10/16/2013 08:12 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> Is a 64bit host expected to support running a 32bit guest OS in qemu/kvm? Or do archs need to match?

64-bit guets on 64-bit host exposing a 64-bit environment - works just
fine; supported, uses hardware acceleration.

32-bit guest on 64-bit host exposing only a 32-bit environment - works
just fine; supported, uses hardware acceleration.

32-bit guest on 64-bit host exposing a 64-bit environment - works just
fine; supported, uses hardware acceleration.

32-bit guest on 32-bit host (necessarily exposing a 32-bit environment)
- works just fine; supported, uses hardware acceleration (but gets less
testing, as few people run virt hosts in 32-bit mode).

No support for running a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host (hardware just
doesn't expose enough memory).

Cross arch testing - works just fine, but slower (uses qemu emulation
rather than hardware accelation), and a bit harder to support, but still
useful; can only support a bit width in the guest <= bit width in the host.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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