Xen users - May 2008 - Xen: The processor(s) in this machine do not support full virtualization.

Hello,

did that mean my local processor doesn''t scope the perfomance which is
needed for virtualization?

my notebook sprec:

Dell inspiron 8600

Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz

Total memory (RAM):  461.9 MB

A other questions which concerning to the openGL. I am not shure, but
will Xen support OpenGL or not?

For what I should focus on for my next notebook, to have full 3D support with
Xen.


Thanks in advanced.

regards

joerg




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On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 9:35 AM, "Jörg Kühne"
<joerg.kuehne@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> did that mean my local processor doesn't scope the perfomance which is
needed for virtualization?
it's not a matter of performance, it's about processor features.

traditionally, the x86 architecture supported a limited kind of
virtualization, meant to be used by OSs to isolate different tasks on
the same OS; but not to isolate several OSs running at the same time.

without that, several software  packages managed (qemu/kqemu, VPC,
VMWare) to do VM by a complex combination of emulation and
virtualization.  it's really hard to do given the chip limiatations,
and even harder to do it efficiently.

Xen's original idea was to do Paravirtualization (PV), that means
modifying the 'guest' OS so that it doesn't need to be _totally_
virtualized.  it runs really well, and gives great performance, but
can't be done if you don't have the source code (and license) to
modify the OSs.  that means it works for Linux, BSD (and a few others)
guests; but not windows.

both Intel and AMD decided to add hardware to their chips to help with
that, (several names, lets settle on HVM).  with HVM chips (Pentium M
wasn't one of them), Xen can (with some help from qemu) create a
'fully virtualized' guest, able to run windows (and more
'unmodified'
OSs).  it's slower than PV, thought.

so, what that message means is that you can run PV guests, but not HVM
ones.  IOW: windows is out, linux is in.

hope that helps

-- 
Javier

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Hello!
> did that mean my local processor doesn''t scope the perfomance
which is
> needed for virtualization?
>
> my notebook sprec:
>
> Dell inspiron 8600
>
> Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
>
> Total memory (RAM):  461.9 MB
Javier has already very eloquently described the meaning of the message
you''re
seeing.

I''ll just note that if you need full virtualisation (for instance to
run
Windows) you could try one of the solutions he suggested (qemu/kqemu, VPC,
VMWare) and note that there is also Parallels and VirtualBox.

qemu / kqemu and VirtualBox are Open Source, Free software.  The others are 
commercial.

I''ve been rather impressed with VirtualBox on my pre-HVM machine
recently.

I''ll also note that Xen/HVM, VirtualBox and kvm all use code from the
qemu
project, so in some sense it''s one of the "parents" of Open
Source
virtualisation.
> A other questions which concerning to the openGL. I am not shure, but
> will Xen support OpenGL or not?
Xen only supports a relatively low performance 2D graphics interface for 
guests.  There is a Free OpenGL virtualisation solution called VMGL by H.  
Andrés Lagar-Cavilla (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/xen-gl/) although I 
don''t know if that''s in continuing development.  It can run
some full
featured GL apps, as you can see from the screenshots.  I don''t know if
it
would support Compiz, though.

It won''t work with Windows guests, so its applications to gaming are
somewhat
limited by that.

3D virtualisation is hard.  VMGL was one approach to it, Jacob Gorm Hansen did 
some work on it too.  I know other people who have been looking into 3D 
virtualisation under Xen but I can''t guarantee what they''ll
produce or when
they''ll produce it.

There are also people working on 3D virtualisation for other virtual machine 
programs, both Open Source and proprietary.  I think we''ll see more
solutions
popping up in the future.
> For what I should focus on for my next notebook, to have full 3D support
> with Xen.
It would be nice but there are no concrete plans for if / when Xen will have 
full 3D support for domUs.

Cheers,
Mark

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Mark Williamson wrote:
 
> Hello!
> 
> > did that mean my local processor doesn''t scope the perfomance
which is
> > needed for virtualization?
> >
> > my notebook sprec:
> >
> > Dell inspiron 8600
> >
> > Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
> >
> > Total memory (RAM):  461.9 MB
> 
> Javier has already very eloquently described the meaning of the message
you''re
> seeing.
> 
> I''ll just note that if you need full virtualisation (for instance
to run
> Windows) you could try one of the solutions he suggested (qemu/kqemu, VPC,
> VMWare) and note that there is also Parallels and VirtualBox.
> 
> qemu / kqemu and VirtualBox are Open Source, Free software.  The others are
> commercial.
> 
> I''ve been rather impressed with VirtualBox on my pre-HVM machine
recently.
> 
> I''ll also note that Xen/HVM, VirtualBox and kvm all use code from
the qemu
> project, so in some sense it''s one of the "parents" of
Open Source
> virtualisation.
> 
> > A other questions which concerning to the openGL. I am not shure, but
> > will Xen support OpenGL or not?
> 
> Xen only supports a relatively low performance 2D graphics interface for 
> guests.  There is a Free OpenGL virtualisation solution called VMGL by H.  
> Andrés Lagar-Cavilla (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/xen-gl/) although
I
> don''t know if that''s in continuing development.  It can
run some full
> featured GL apps, as you can see from the screenshots.  I don''t
know if it
> would support Compiz, though.
> 
> It won''t work with Windows guests, so its applications to gaming
are somewhat
> limited by that.
> 
> 3D virtualisation is hard.  VMGL was one approach to it, Jacob Gorm Hansen
did
> some work on it too.  I know other people who have been looking into 3D 
> virtualisation under Xen but I can''t guarantee what
they''ll produce or when
> they''ll produce it.
> 
> There are also people working on 3D virtualisation for other virtual
machine
> programs, both Open Source and proprietary.  I think we''ll see
more solutions
> popping up in the future.
> 
> > For what I should focus on for my next notebook, to have full 3D
support
> > with Xen.
> 
> It would be nice but there are no concrete plans for if / when Xen will
have
> full 3D support for domUs.
Without knowing fully what the future holds. I would look at Xen advanced
graphics support being provided through a combination of PV drivers that
interface with SDL or some remote display technology like NX (or both).

I would also think OpenGL library support would come through the Mesa
framework in some fashion.

These are just obvious choices that I am hypothesizing about.

-Ross

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> > 3D virtualisation is hard.  VMGL was one approach to it, Jacob Gorm
> > Hansen did some work on it too.  I know other people who have been
> > looking into 3D virtualisation under Xen but I can''t
guarantee what
> > they''ll produce or when they''ll produce it.
> >
> > There are also people working on 3D virtualisation for other virtual
> > machine programs, both Open Source and proprietary.  I think
we''ll see
> > more solutions popping up in the future.
> >
> > > For what I should focus on for my next notebook, to have full 3D
> > > support with Xen.
> >
> > It would be nice but there are no concrete plans for if / when Xen
will
> > have full 3D support for domUs.
>
> Without knowing fully what the future holds. I would look at Xen advanced
> graphics support being provided through a combination of PV drivers that
> interface with SDL or some remote display technology like NX (or both).
>
> I would also think OpenGL library support would come through the Mesa
> framework in some fashion.
Well, VMGL transfers OpenGL commands over the network, making it VMM 
independent (and network transparent, effectively), which is quite nice.  I 
think these days X11''s GLX API can also transmit commands over the
network
and have them hardware accelerated at the host running the X Server.  So that 
could help too...

A Qemu developer has experimented with adding interfaces to relay OpenGL 
commands out of a VM and accelerate them natively on the host system - quite 
impressive results there too.

This doesn''t solve the problem for other 3D APIs though - Direct3D in 
particular is what I''m thinking of.  Fabrice Bellard, Qemu author,
suggested
that the Qemu solution could use Wine''s Direct3D->OpenGL code to
reduce
Direct 3D to the solved case of transmitting GL commands.  Might work but 
possibly not ideal.

I''m aware of some folks who have been looking at a more cross-API,
cross-OS
means of paravirtualising 3D graphics.  If they have time to try to make this 
work, it could be quite interesting.  Certainly their design seems quite 
sound.
> These are just obvious choices that I am hypothesizing about.
Indeed.

There must have been work from the commercial VM companies on this.  In the 
ooooooold days, there used to be emulation of pre-GPU 3D accelerators by some 
virtual machine solutions.  They gave up on that later, presumably because 
the task became too complex.  I don''t know if any commercial VM
solutions do
3D virtualisation at the moment but they will, I''m sure, since 3D is 
increasingly important these days.  I rather wonder if Citrix has thought 
about this but I have no inside knowledge there whatsoever - sadly!

I also heard that MS had been talking to ... Nvidia, I think ... about 
hardware support for 3D graphics virtualisation.  That would make a lot of 
sense, so perhaps we''ll see that enter the market too at some point in
the
future.

Cheers,
Mark

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