(I hope to evoke the diplomacy demonstrated by our revered Colin Watson when he tells you that grub2 *might* eat your kittens.)
Ubuntu's virtualization packages (kvm, qemu -> qemu-kvm) are about to undergo a change that might introduce some inconveniences over the next few days. Hopefully not. But maybe. As discussed at UDS, * https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/server-karmic-kvm-qemu-packaging I'm writing here to warn you about this, and invite you to file bug reports as necessary. My apologies in advance for any issues. * https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/qemu-kvm/+filebug Basically, a single qemu-kvm package (currently in Universe -- please, by all means, start testing it now! -- but moving to Main soon, LP: #417107) will replace the kvm package (which will become a stub transitional package depending on qemu-kvm). A second binary package, qemu-kvm-extras, will provide all of the non-x86, non-accelerated architectures traditionally provided by qemu (which should also become a stub transitional package). If you're a libvirt user (ie, virsh, virt-manager, eucalyptus, etc), you shouldn't notice any change. If you do, well that's a bug. Please help shake those out before we unleash Karmic on our non-devel users. Why the changes? Having two different copies of the same code (kvm, qemu) has been very painful from a maintenance perspective. Security fixes and CVEs have to be rolled against multiple source packages, built, verified, etc. Fortunately, the upstream projects are merging (which will hopefully be complete around our next Ubuntu release), and the qemu-kvm releases provided by upstream are the first step in that direction. Furthermore, the upstream projects are also committing to provide support and fixes that apply to the qemu-kvm branch (but not for the kvm and qemu releases, which are intended for developers only). The kernel pieces of kvm are now significantly more mature, and are already in our Ubuntu kernels. What if you still want to run qemu? We have setup daily builds (qemu, qemu-kvm, libvirt) in the ~ubuntu-virt Launchpad PPA. If you're interested in bleeding edge qemu, qemu-kvm, or libvirt, I invite you to use those. * https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-virt/+archive/virt-daily-upstream -- :-Dustin -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
