From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 9 16:05:13 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3450416A401 for ; Mon, 9 Apr 2007 16:05:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from anderson@freebsd.org) Received: from mh1.centtech.com (moat3.centtech.com [64.129.166.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1572213C4BC for ; Mon, 9 Apr 2007 16:05:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from anderson@freebsd.org) Received: from [10.177.171.220] (neutrino.centtech.com [10.177.171.220]) by mh1.centtech.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l39G55Hm057307; Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11:05:06 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from anderson@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <461A6431.2030709@freebsd.org> Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:05:05 -0500 From: Eric Anderson User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070320) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Christian Laursen , freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org References: <200704050712.l357Ck5F000488@pluto.hedeland.org> <4614F65D.3010403@freebsd.org> <20070405215754.GA28008@saturn.kn-bremen.de> In-Reply-To: <20070405215754.GA28008@saturn.kn-bremen.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.4/3054/Mon Apr 9 09:31:59 2007 on mh1.centtech.com X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=8.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.1.6 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.6 (2006-10-03) on mh1.centtech.com Cc: Subject: Re: Bounty and timeline on vmware 5.x on FreeBSD 6.x X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:05:13 -0000 On 04/05/07 16:57, Juergen Lock wrote: > On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 06:16:45PM +0200, Christian Laursen wrote: >> Eric Anderson writes: >> >>>>> Maybe the real question is, what is QEMU missing, that VMWare has? >>>>> I can think of three things right off: >>>>> >>>>> - Good video card support >>>>> - Real PXE enabled network card >>>>> - VM extension use (huge in my opinion) >>>> Personally (a relatively happy qemu user since a year or so) I don't >>>> care at all about the first two - and don't know if I care about the >>>> last one - what is it?:-) >>> The first one is essential for running any graphical OS at full screen >>> on a halfway decent system (my laptop has 1920x1200 resolution!). >>> Sure I can run in a smaller window, but my point is that it isn't >>> synchronous to vmware in that case. >> Patches have been posted to qemu-devel implementing the vmware video card. >> Chances are good, that it will be committed at some point. > > It has been committed to qemu cvs, will soon be to the qemu-devel port > assuming no bad regressions found in testing. (It doesn't seem to work > with xorg 7.1.0 tho, at least in quick testing, see my post on the > qemu list.) >>> PXE boot support is essential for a lot of people doing lots of kernel >>> development, either in FreeBSD or Linux. Of course you don't have to >>> have that, but I've found it to be incredibly helpful. QEMU actually >>> has etherboot support, which supports pxe booting, but the FreeBSD BTX >>> goo is slightly unhappy with that, and causes it not to work. I don't >>> know anything about BTX or assembly, so I can't help there. >> Some PXE stuff has been committed to QEMU cvs since the last release. >> I'm not sure whether it is included in the version installed by the >> qemu-devel port. > > It is, but its based on etherboot roms which don't work with FreeBSD's > bootcode (due to the real mode problem? don't remember...) >>> The last one is relating to newer processors' feature of virtual >>> machine extensions, both Intel ('Core' and 'Core 2') and latest AMD >>> processors have that. What that allows, is basically the virtual >>> machine to run it's own virtual processor, using the real processor to >>> do most of the CPU virtualization - which means the system runs native >>> speed. I can tell you from using VMWare workstation 5.5 with that >>> extension, that it is *FAST*. I think only work on kqemu kernel >>> module would be needed there, but I don't know really. >> Hardware virtualization is mentioned on >> . I'm not exactly sure what the >> timeframe is for the things listed there. > > Me neither. It might be worth noting that there are other opensource > virtualization solutions out now that could be worth looking at by > interested kernel developers, porting those might be easier than > closed source vmware... > > 1. kvm, for cpus with hardware virtualization support (based on qemu): > http://kvm.qumranet.com/ > > 2. virtualbox, which also runs vista: > http://virtualbox.org/ VirtualBox looks VERY nice.. I've seen a thread about a month ago from someone trying to get it to compile on FreeBSD. After hacking the configure file a bit, I've gotten closer, but some of the kmk stuff is linked to libc.so.6, which isn't so good for me running -CURRENT. Honestly, I think porting vmware is now less interesting knowing that virtualbox is so competitive, and more easily portable. Eric