Rusty's Remarkably Unreliable Guide to Lguest
- or, A Young Coder's Illustrated Hypervisor
http://lguest.ozlabs.org
Lguest is designed to be a minimal hypervisor for the Linux kernel, for
Linux developers and users to experiment with virtualization with the
minimum of complexity. Nonetheless, it should have sufficient
features to make it useful for specific tasks, and, of course, you are
encouraged to fork and enhance it.
Features:
- Kernel module which runs in a normal kernel.
- Simple I/O model for communication.
- Simple program to create new guests.
- Logo contains cute puppies: http://lguest.ozlabs.org
Developer features:
- Fun to hack on.
- No ABI: being tied to a specific kernel anyway, you can change anything.
- Many opportunities for improvement or feature implementation.
Running Lguest:
- Lguest runs the same kernel as guest and host. You can configure
them differently, but usually it's easiest not to.
You will need to configure your kernel with the following options:
CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G=n ("High Memory Support" "64GB")[1]
CONFIG_TUN=y/m ("Universal TUN/TAP device driver support")
CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL=y ("Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers")
CONFIG_PARAVIRT=y ("Paravirtualization support (EXPERIMENTAL)")
CONFIG_LGUEST=y/m ("Linux hypervisor example code")
and I recommend:
CONFIG_HZ=100 ("Timer frequency")[2]
- A tool called "lguest" is available in this directory: type "make"
to build it. If you didn't build your kernel in-tree, use "make
O=<builddir>".
- Create or find a root disk image. There are several useful ones
around, such as the xm-test tiny root image at
http://xm-test.xensource.com/ramdisks/initrd-1.1-i386.img
For more serious work, I usually use a distribution ISO image and
install it under qemu, then make multiple copies:
dd if=/dev/zero of=rootfile bs=1M count=2048
qemu -cdrom image.iso -hda rootfile -net user -net nic -boot d
- "modprobe lg" if you built it as a module.
- Run an lguest as root:
Documentation/lguest/lguest 64m vmlinux --tunnet=192.168.19.1 --block=rootfile root=/dev/lgba
Explanation:
64m: the amount of memory to use.
vmlinux: the kernel image found in the top of your build directory. You
can also use a standard bzImage.
--tunnet=192.168.19.1: configures a "tap" device for networking with this
IP address.
--block=rootfile: a file or block device which becomes /dev/lgba
inside the guest.
root=/dev/lgba: this (and anything else on the command line) are
kernel boot parameters.
- Configuring networking. I usually have the host masquerade, using
"iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE" and "echo 1 >
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward". In this example, I would configure
eth0 inside the guest at 192.168.19.2.
Another method is to bridge the tap device to an external interface
using --tunnet=bridge:<bridgename>, and perhaps run dhcp on the guest
to obtain an IP address. The bridge needs to be configured first:
this option simply adds the tap interface to it.
A simple example on my system:
ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0
brctl addbr lg0
ifconfig lg0 up
brctl addif lg0 eth0
dhclient lg0
Then use --tunnet=bridge:lg0 when launching the guest.
See http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/Bridge for general information
on how to get bridging working.
- You can also create an inter-guest network using
"--sharenet=<filename>": any two guests using the same file are on
the same network. This file is created if it does not exist.
Lguest I/O model:
Lguest uses a simplified DMA model plus shared memory for I/O. Guests
can communicate with each other if they share underlying memory
(usually by the lguest program mmaping the same file), but they can
use any non-shared memory to communicate with the lguest process.
Guests can register DMA buffers at any key (must be a valid physical
address) using the LHCALL_BIND_DMA(key, dmabufs, num<<8|irq)
hypercall. "dmabufs" is the physical address of an array of "num"
"struct lguest_dma": each contains a used_len, and an array of
physical addresses and lengths. When a transfer occurs, the
"used_len" field of one of the buffers which has used_len 0 will be
set to the length transferred and the irq will fire.
Using an irq value of 0 unbinds the dma buffers.
To send DMA, the LHCALL_SEND_DMA(key, dma_physaddr) hypercall is used,
and the bytes used is written to the used_len field. This can be 0 if
noone else has bound a DMA buffer to that key or some other error.
DMA buffers bound by the same guest are ignored.
Cheers!
Rusty Russell rusty@rustcorp.com.au.
[1] These are on various places on the TODO list, waiting for you to
get annoyed enough at the limitation to fix it.
[2] Lguest is not yet tickless when idle. See [1].
