On Thu, 2008-11-27 at 21:40 +0100, Frank Mehnert wrote: > > Well, we are talking about installing packages here.
Yes. > To install > VirtualBox one has to be root, to install kvm one has to be root > as well. No argument. > /etc/init.d/kvm is loading the proper kernel modules > automatically Right. With no /etc/default/kvm "on|off" type switch that many packages employ. > but it is allowed to modify scripts in /etc/init.d. What's allowed to modify scripts in /etc/init.d? If you mean the installer, yeah, but that doesn't scale. It adds a new file which has to be reconciled with a "dpkg-new" version on every upgrade going forward. Failure to carry the changes forward on every upgrade and you wind up with a broken virtualbox again. > Or he could call /etc/init.d/kvm stop before starting > a VirtualBox VM. Iff he was root. My argument is that I should not need (nor even be able) to be root to run virtualbox. Hey, if we were to accept that root privileges might/should be needed to get virtualbox running (not installed, running) then things like a working ICMP ping (my understanding is that virtualbox's lack of root prevents this) would be possible, yes? > Of course this is not possible for a non-root user but I don't want > to prevent users which can get root from having both packages in > parallel on their system. But that doesn't address the need for such a user to know that he has to fiddle with kvm at a command prompt before virtualbox will work. I go back to my previously expressed desire for things to "just work" "out of the box" -- no googling, or mailing list cries for help, etc. needed. > Actually VMware has the same problem. The kvm package should either > not load the kernel modules or the kernel modules should not enable > the root mode by default. Perhaps. I'll have to take your word for it as I'm really not knowledgeable about such things. > But I understand their point: To enable the > VT-x / AMD-V root mode, one has to be root. VirtualBox does this > using its vboxdrv helper module, kvm does this by loading the Linux > kernel modules at boot time ... So ultimately, maybe kvm needs to rework how they do that. But in the meanwhile, it makes life a bit more difficult for a parallel installation. On Thu, 2008-11-27 at 21:47 +0100, Frank Mehnert wrote: > > I'm sure many users don't complain doing > > # doing VirtualBox stuff > sudo /etc/init.d/kvm stop > VirtualBox > ... > > # doing KVM stuff > sudo /etc/init.d/kvm start Assuming a) that they have sudo access and b) that they are comfortable with the command-line (which a goal of a good O/S should be minimizing more and more). Many people (like my mom and my wife and my son) just want to click something on a menu, and I would give none of them root access as they simply don't know what they are doing at a command prompt and I don't want to have to fix borked machines. And sure, now I know that I cannot install kvm and virtualbox. It would have just been nice to have avoided the need to figure this out for myself. I'm just trying to save the future head-scratchers. b.
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