Talk:Kernel-based Virtual Machine: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:49, 20 April 2010

Revision as of 16:29, 4 May 2010

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:[[Gmane]] is website that archives public [[mailing list]]s and provides a mail-to-NNTP gateway. Messages found on Gmane are not present on other Usenet newsservers. -- [[user:intgr|intgr]]&nbsp;<small>[[user talk:intgr|[talk]]]</small> 09:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

== Version numbers and infoboxes ==

*Recently an IP user [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine&diff=358700053&oldid=358326152 made an edit, creating a separate infobox for "kvm-kmod"].

*I [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine&diff=358807120&oldid=358700053 reverted this] stating: "''{{green|revert, kvm-kmod and qemu-kvm are just Fedora packages, "kmod" is the repackaging of parts of the Linux kernel}}''"

*IP [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine&diff=359798675&oldid=358807120 changed it back] with message: "''{{green|user doesn't know what he's talking about, see kvm's download page}}''"

Yes I saw the download page. It explicitly states "''{{green|The kernel modules can be found in kvm-kmod-<kernel version>. A kernel version of 2.6.32.3 means that these are the same modules as those included with the 2.6.32.3 kernel from www.kernel.org}}''". In other words, kvm-kmod packages KVM kernel modules that are otherwise part of official kernel.org kernels.

And in fact the "kvm-kmod" package is Fedora-specific, other distros like [http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic-updates/amd64/linux-image-2.6.31-21-server/filelist Ubuntu], [http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=openSUSE%3A11.2&p=1&q=kernel-default openSUSE] and [http://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/kernel26/ Arch Linux] package them as part of the kernel package (look for files kvm.ko, kvm-amd.ko, kvm-intel.ko). The linux-kvm.org website is actually maintained by Red Hat so it's no surprise that they only cover Fedora there.

The problem with the infobox in the first place is that KVM is not one specific piece of software. "KVM" itself is actually a subsystem of the Linux kernel, which provides an user-space API to processor-specific virtualization technologies (VT-x and AMD-V). And then there's QEMU, which was forked into a "QEMU-KVM" project to add KVM support. Personally I'd just remove the version numbers from the infobox entirely because the way it's represented now is simply incorrect... But I'm not sure it will stay that way -- surely always there's someone who will add them back.

So, ideas? Alternatives? -- [[user:intgr|intgr]]&nbsp;<small>[[user talk:intgr|[talk]]]</small> 16:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)