kvm vs qemu-kvm vs kvm-kmod

Ubuntu recently change their package names for kvm.  This comment posted on qemu-0.11.0 Released provides an explanation:

qemu-kvm includes features and fixes from upstream qemu and so takes its naming scheme from upstream qemu. You can think of it as qemu optimized for kvm. Note too that qemu-kvm does not include the kernel module but only the userspace and considered to be stable.

kvm-xx on the other hand is the development branch of kvm and not considered to be stable. It’s naming scheme is arbitrary and it also takes features from upstream qemu.

kvm-kmod is different to kvm-xx. You can think of kvm-kmod as a subset of the kvm-xx. KVM-xx = userspace + kernel where kvm-kmod is the kernel part of it and qemu-kvm is the userspace part (the guest process itself). You can apply the kvm-kmod to any distro version or linux version.. it’s just the kernel driver. However, without the userspace part, you can’t do much with it.

Jaunty and md

Not to disrespect Ubuntu, but Jaunty must be the worse release they have made in a long time. Whether it be an unusable desktop because of a poor kernel – upgrading to 2.6.30 is a good idea – or just poor packaging – md overwriting the mdadm.conf file? WTF?  See here and here for the workaround lists, and here to fix the md issue.

Karmic is getting good reviews. Lets hope its an easy upgrade and sets the scene for an amazing 10.4 release.

kvm disk performance with different backends

Here  some results from testing I did in August 2009 on  KVM with the three different disk image drivers. First a single disk system running Ubuntu x64 9.04:

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Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop

Just did an install of the 9.04 desktop. Very clean. Intend to do some testing with kvm, virtual box and win4lin.

From Professional VMware blog, here is another method to fix your lost Ethernet device on Ubuntu.

Another method of doing this, is to edit the ‘persistent-net-generator.rules’ file to include something similar to:

# ignore VMware virtual interfaces
ATTR{address}==”00:0c:29:*”, GOTO=”persistent_net_generator_end”

linux-image-virtual with ESX

According to this thread, if you need to use the linux-image-virtual package on ubuntu then it only supports the “bus logic” scsi controller with ESX.

Install Ubuntu via USB

The device pictured is a 16GB SanDisk CruzerUS...
Image via Wikipedia

I tried several methods last night including Unetbootin, and this is the one that worked best.

Basically copy the ISO on the USB root directory, add vmlinuz and initrd.gz from main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/. Then add syslinux.cfg with:

default vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz

If you have boot problems you might also need to run install-mbr /dev/sda from the mbr package.

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Ubuntu and djbdns

I keep smacking into this issue. So a couple notes to myself for future reference.

Before install touch /etc/inittab and afterwards add this to /etc/event.d/svscan:

start on runlevel 3
start on runlevel 4
start on runlevel 5

stop on runlevel 0
stop on runlevel 1
stop on runlevel 6

respawn
exec /usr/bin/svscanboot