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2 Replies Last post: Jun 17, 2007 8:33 AM by Haydn
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Linux VMI Interface

Jun 16, 2007 11:29 AM

Click to view Haydn's profile Lurker Haydn 3 posts since
Jun 16, 2007
I have been running Fedora 7 as a Linux Guest on Workstation 6 on Windows XP host and haven't had many issues to date except the rare hang where my host PC would simply hang up and not even Ctrl-Alt-Delete will do anything.

However, my question is with regards to the linux vmi hooks. Fedora 7 now runs 2.6.21 and seems to be running pretty good on Workstation 6. My question is how can I verify that workstation 6 is using the vmi interface with the linux kernel? I don't see anything in dmesg or /proc/interrupts to give me an indication the interface is actually being used? Can anyone shed some light for me on this? Thanks in advance.
Reply Re: Linux VMI Interface Jun 17, 2007 8:14 AM
Click to view Haydn's profile Lurker Haydn 3 posts since
Jun 16, 2007
After researching more on the forums I found the message i should be looking for. I had read in articles that both ubuntu and Fedora 7 support VMI so had assumned that Fedora 7 had it active by default. After recompiling kernel with VMI enabled I get the following output

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | grep VMI
VMI: Found VMware, Inc. Hypervisor OPROM, API version 3.0, ROM version 1.0
VMI timer cycles/sec = 2127999000 ; cycles/jiffy = 2127999 ;cycles/alarm = 21279990

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | grep vmi
Booting paravirtualized kernel on vmi
Time: vmi-timer clocksource has been installed.
Reply Re: Linux VMI Interface Jun 17, 2007 8:33 AM
in response to: Haydn
Click to view Haydn's profile Lurker Haydn 3 posts since
Jun 16, 2007
Just as a note, the paravirt kernel works wonderfully under Workstation 6 and that is with a windows host.. just imagine a linux host. My Linux VM is responding MUCH FASTER!! I am impressed vmware.. good job on the VMI. It's left to be seen how the other interfaces ie Xen etc compares. Can't wait for VMI support to be released on the Server product.
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