previously on this list Kevin Chadwick contributed: > > So I'm hoping I can boot OpenBSD with qemu or Windows or Linux > > under multiboot or alternatively boot xenserver or something off a usb > > and select 2 or more of the multiboots to run concurrently. > > > > Any input as to if this is possible with esxi or anything else would be > > appreciated. > > So it seems Alpine-Xen with the bonus of grsecurity on dom0 is the > closest and most flexible backstop option (if you have the supported > hardware) and less tied to Linux especially for a single self-contained > laptop and can boot existing partitions in hvm mode, so I can boot it > from a multiboot partition or cd/usb or just usb hdd to install X on > dom0. Please say if you disagree (this machine will be offline too, so > little need to raise the security concerns that I understand quite > well).
So I have to say I am rather unimpressed with the video speed of xen, perhaps because I haven't had time to investigate using anything other than localhost:vnc as of yet. I know you can use vga passthrough but I would need two or three separate gpus on a laptop which is rediculous and this got me thinking; if I have 4 cores likely mostly idle whilst I am using windows then the case for kvm speed improvements is rather weak where a power supply is available at least and the case for OpenBSD native and non kvm strengthened further and so I wanted to compare the difference. It wasn't the cpu and disk/net I/O that was a problem when running Windows on Linux on a system without hardware virtualisation but the gpu too. So http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2012-09/msg01415.html http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/qemu-1-20-windows-2008-r2-td141219.html https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/921208 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=133612760603867&w=2 The kqemu port entry from the attic states. "remove kqemu (which was broken, reported by Alexander Schrijver and probably others) and qemu-old; the current qemu version in emulators/qemu works well now (kqemu is no longer supported upstream)." I guess works well means for emulating OpenBSD for kernel debugging (will these missing cpu features affect that?) and such which is more important but perhaps we need a second port for running Windows and if that is now failing what else may be (Linux?). If I do find I need windows I guess I will look into the possibility of that port or learning to love hibernate ;-) Can anyone confirm that a 32bit cd can work with qemu? kqemu was removed in aug 2011 and the following video is showing windows 8 running in september 2011 which I believe is no longer possible due to I think windows bailing out on missing cpu options even when I believe the correct cpu type is chosen (Westmere here). www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYgUDD6_5JQ Is virtualisation really just meant for server systems which is laughably ironic considering the security complications. It looks like bochs still works, atleast it gets to the 64 bit Windows 7 language selection after literally about 20 minutes. A dmesg under bochs shows the cpu options to be exactly the same as the host but under qemu they are reduced. I guess for qemu it is a choice between blue screens if the unsupported options are ever attempted to be used by Windows and immediately during the install but as there is a report of "no crashes" in Sep 2011 I guess attempts to use them did not or not often caused crashes. The dmesg also shows the bios vendor to both be Vendor Bochs with qemu having a date of 2011 and bochs 2007. The qemu limited dmesg is below but the Actual natively reported CPU supported features are: cpu0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 560 @ 2.67GHz, 2926.55 MHz cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT, PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL, DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID, SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT,AES,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF,ITSC ______________________________________________________________________ >> OpenBSD/amd64 CDBOOT 3.23 boot> cannot open cd0a:/etc/random.seed: No such file or directory booting cd0a:/5.5/amd64/bsd.rd: 4185012+1360197+2919872+0+520656 [100+344496+223625]=0xd1d0b8 entry point at 0x10001e0 [7205c766, 34000004, 24448b12, 45b0a304] Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1995-2014 OpenBSD. All rights reserved. http://www.OpenBSD.org OpenBSD 5.5-current (RAMDISK_CD) #131: Mon May 19 09:46:47 MDT 2014 [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/RAMDISK_CD real mem = 2130698240 (2031MB) avail mem = 2068701184 (1972MB) mainbus0 at root bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.4 @ 0xf0a00 (10 entries) bios0: vendor Bochs version "Bochs" date 01/01/2011 bios0: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996) acpi0 at bios0: rev 0 acpi0: sleep states S3 S4 S5 acpi0: tables DSDT FACP SSDT APIC HPET acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor) cpu0: Westmere E56xx/L56xx/X56xx (Nehalem-C), 2928.14 MHz cpu0: FPU,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH, MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SSE3,PCLMUL,SSSE3,CX16,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT,AES,NXE, LONG,LAHF cpu0: 64KB 64b/line 2-way I-cache, 64KB 64b/line 2-way D-cache, 512KB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache cpu0: ITLB 255 4KB entries direct-mapped, 255 4MB entries direct-mapped cpu0: DTLB 255 4KB entries direct-mapped, 255 4MB entries direct-mapped cpu0: apic clock running at 1010MHz ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 0 pa 0xfec00000, version 11, 24 pins acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0) pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0 pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82441FX" rev 0x02 "Intel 82371SB ISA" rev 0x00 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 not configured pciide0 at pci0 dev 1 function 1 "Intel 82371SB IDE" rev 0x00: DMA, channel 0 wired to compatibility, channel 1 wired to compatibility wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <QEMU HARDDISK> wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 20480MB, 41943040 sectors wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 atapiscsi0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0 scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <QEMU, QEMU DVD-ROM, 2.0.> ATAPI 5/cdrom removable cd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 "Intel 82371AB Power" rev 0x03 at pci0 dev 1 function 3 not configured vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 unknown vendor 0x1234 product 0x1111 rev 0x00 wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation) em0 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 "Intel 82540EM" rev 0x03: apic 0 int 11, address 52:54:00:12:34:56 isa0 at mainbus0 com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo com0: console pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5 pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot) pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0 softraid0 at root scsibus1 at softraid0: 256 targets root on rd0a swap on rd0b dump on rd0b -- _______________________________________________________________________ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________
