Thanks to a colleague, I found a nice informative link on Virtualization. Trying to resolve ACPI on my new laptop, I recently stumbled on the 2.6.20-rc2 kernel option for KVM and assumed it to be some new piece my Xen hypervisor could take advantage of (once I get the ACPI issues resolved). Instead, I have just learned that it provides native kernel virtualization, such that you can just boot your favorite ISO (Windows, Solaris, OSX, Linux) and go. Seems easy enough I will try out the Deban instructions tonight as shown on kvm.sourceforge.net. The first step is only apt-get install kvm if you already have a 2.6.20-rc2 or greater kernel.
To install and run kvm on Debian, follow these steps:
- Run the commands:
apt-get install kvm apt-get install kvm-source
m-a build kvm
m-a install kvm
modprobe kvm- Create a disk image:
qemu-img create -f qcow vdisk.img 10G- Install an operating system:
kvm -hda vdisk.img -cdrom /path/to/boot-media.iso -boot d -m 384If you’re installing Windows, add the-no-acpiflag.- After installation is complete, run it with:
kvm -hda vdisk.img -boot c -m 384
Note, the mm series of the current kernel (2.6.20-rc4-mm1) has quite a few KVM updates.
