Full virtualization on i386 and amd64 hardware
Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual PCs, each running unmodified Linux or
Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a
network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for
Linux hosts on x86 (32 and 64-bit) hardware.
KVM is intended for systems where the processor has hardware support for
virtualization, see below for details. All combinations of 32-bit and 64-bit
host and guest systems are supported, except 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts.
KVM requires your system to support hardware virtualization, provided by AMD's
SVM capability or Intel's VT. To find out if your processor has the necessary
support, do as follows:
* Make sure you run Linux 2.6.16 or newer for AMD processors, or
Linux 2.6.15 for Intel processors. Older Linux versions do not report
the virtualization capabilities.
* Run this command in a shell: egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
If it prints anything, the processor provides hardware virtualization
support and is suitable for use with KVM.
Without hardware support, you can use qemu instead, possibly with the kqemu
package for better performance.
The recommended qemu package contains the script
/usr/sbin/qemu-make-debian-root, which uses debootstrap to build a Debian disk
image. See the man page for qemu-make-debian-root. The suggested hal package
is only used for automatically reporting the system bios version and computer
model when reporting bugs.
KVM consists of two loadable kernel modules (kvm.ko and either kvm-amd.ko or
kvm-intel.ko) and a userspace component. This package contains the userspace
component, and you can get the kernel modules from the standard kernel images
or build them yourself from the kvm-source package which provides the module
source.
Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual PCs, each running unmodified Linux or
Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a
network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for
Linux hosts on x86 (32 and 64-bit) hardware.
KVM is intended for systems where the processor has hardware support for
virtualization, see below for details. All combinations of 32-bit and 64-bit
host and guest systems are supported, except 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts.
KVM requires your system to support hardware virtualization, provided by AMD's
SVM capability or Intel's VT. To find out if your processor has the necessary
support, do as follows:
* Make sure you run Linux 2.6.16 or newer for AMD processors, or
Linux 2.6.15 for Intel processors. Older Linux versions do not report
the virtualization capabilities.
* Run this command in a shell: egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
If it prints anything, the processor provides hardware virtualization
support and is suitable for use with KVM.
Without hardware support, you can use qemu instead, possibly with the kqemu
package for better performance.
The recommended qemu package contains the script
/usr/sbin/qemu-make-debian-root, which uses debootstrap to build a Debian disk
image. See the man page for qemu-make-debian-root. The suggested hal package
is only used for automatically reporting the system bios version and computer
model when reporting bugs.
KVM consists of two loadable kernel modules (kvm.ko and either kvm-amd.ko or
kvm-intel.ko) and a userspace component. This package contains the userspace
component, and you can get the kernel modules from the standard kernel images
or build them yourself from the kvm-source package which provides the module
source.
