KVM

Kernel Setup

KVM is a hardware-accelerated full-machine hypervisor and virtualization solution included as part of kernel 2.6.20 and later. It allows you to create and start hardware-accelerated virtual machines under Linux using the QEMU tools.

Kernel Setup

To enable KVM, the following kernel config parameters should be enabled (this is based on a 3.x kernel):

Under Processor type and features, enable Paravirtualized Guest Support. Under the Paravirtualized Guest Support menu, enable any options related to KVM, such as KVM paravirtualized clock and in particular KVM Guest Support.

Under the Virtualization category from the main kernel config menu, enable Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support, and enable at least one type of KVM, either for Intel or AMD processors. It is also recommended to enable Host kernel acceleration for virtio net.

You can use modules or build these parts directly into the kernel. Build your new kernel and modules, and reboot.

User-space tools

KVM is essentially a kernel-accelerated version of QEMU. To enable KVM support in the user-space tools, add the following lines to /etc/make.conf:

QEMU_SOFTMMU_TARGETS="i386 x86_64"
QEMU_USER_TARGETS="i386 x86_64"

Once the make.conf variables above are set, emerge qemu-kvm:

#  emerge qemu-kvm

Starting your first KVM virtual machine

To start your first KVM virtual machine, first download SysRescueCD and save it to systemrescuecd.iso. Then use the following commands, which will create a 10GB qcow disk image to use for the first disk, and then the next command will start your virtual machine, booting from the CD:

# qemu-img create -f qcow2 vdisk.qcow2 10
# qemu-system-x86_64 vdisk.qcow2 -m 1024 -cdrom systemrescuecd.iso  -net nic -net user
VNC server running on `127.0.0.1:5900'

Now you should be able to use a VNC client to connect to 127.0.0.1:5900 and access your virtual machine.