KVM Stable PCI Addresses
Sommario
Allow devices in KVM guest virtual machines to retain the same PCI address allocations as other devices are added or removed from the guest configuration.
This is particularily important for Windows guests in order to prevent warnings or reactivation when device addresses change.
Progettista
- Nome: Markus Armbruster
Stato corrente
- Target: Fedora 13
- Per informazioni aggiornate sullo stato di KVM Stable PCI Addresses consultare la pagina originale.
Descrizione dettagliata
QEMU allocates PCI addresses to devices (mostly) in the order it creates the devices, which depends in part on the order they appear on the command line. Built-in PCI devices - like the IDE, USB and VGA controllers - are allocated first.
Windows will warn users when a device's PCI address is changed and may even require the Windows install to be reactivated. In order to prevent this, we should do what we can to ensure that the device does not move PCI between slots as devices are added or removed to/from the guest configuration.
A related problem is that of guest ABI changes between versions of QEMU. That is, updating to a newer version of QEMU may cause devices to change subtly (e.g. PCI class of a device or additional capabilities) which again may require Windows to be reactivated. See also Features/KVM Stable Guest ABI.
A number of solutions were discussed upstream. In the end, it was decided to let QEMU allocate device addresses for new devices, then store them in the guest's XML configuration, and specify them on the command line when recreating the guest. This relies on an an improved info pci for querying the address, and the new -device for specifying it.
Vantaggi per Fedora
This feature would remove a significant issue with Fedora's virtualization support of Windows.
Documentazione
- Izik's patch (November 2007)
- Markus's patch series (Jan 2009)
- Markus's machine description format RFC (February 2009)
- Markus's tenth iteration of his machine description patches (April 2009)
- First thread where saveabi idea came up (May 2009)
- Most recent discussion (June 2009)
Note di rilascio
KVM guests in Fedora now have stable PCI addresses, reducing the chance that Windows guests will require reactivation as guest configuration is modified.