Discuss General Reading on Virtualisation

[TerryE]

This is the companion discussion topic for General Reading on Virtualisation. Any comments gratefully recieved, and I and the other moderators will use them to update the master article.

[stefan.becker]

I have a link for a virtualbox howto forlinux hosts in german.

http://www.linuxforen.de/forums/showthread.php?t=236444

[Technologov]

Since I wrote a paper some time ago, it would be a sin not to publish it.
http://forgeftp.novell.com/lfl/.html/vi ... ation.html

-Technologov

[TerryE]

Alexey, I will add your paper. Can I also cheekily add another two to your list:

• Binary Translation. This is where the guest order code is in effect treated as a source code which is them compiled into a P&G conforming order code. This is what Qemu does. It has many parallels to straight emulation, but the performance is a lot better, say a 2-3x slow down, or in the case where the target architecture is largely the same as the source and many instructons just map 1-1 this gives typically less than a 20% slow down. This is what VMware does for Guest Ring 0 code.
• Application Virtualisaton as in Softricity and Wine. Very similar to OS virtualisation but the abstraction layer is moved up to beneath the Application enabling you to virtualize on a per app basis.

[Technologov]

I notice, but there is a problem
>Binary Translation

It can mean 2 things:
userspace level = slow = Qemu
-or-
kernelspace level = fast = VMware
This will require a lot more explanations on that topic of kernelspace/userspace.

In my article I point to kernelspace methods as "Full virtualization".

I don't want to get further into detail, because it is aimed at users, not developers.

-Technologov

[TerryE]

I know its a bugger: to keep things simple and understandable you often end up being "economical with the truth".

[joelbon]

@ TerryE
I found a couple of broken links in http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=1
The first one is under "The Grand Daddy of Them All" and the second is under "VirtualBox Documents". I figure your pretty busy and may not be able to fix it right away, but you can't fix something you don't know is broken.
The one for the Virtual Documents IMO is probably an important one to have working. Thanks for your hard work.

[TerryE]

Thanks, I've updated those links. The P&G paper is really a classic not quite along side Euclids Elements, Neuton's PM, Gödel's on formally undecidable propositions, but definitely a second tier all time great IMHO.

[vi86]

Modedit: contents removed

[Technologov]

vi86: Spam is not allowed on our Forums. You are risking to be banned, and your posts deleted.

[alromeromx]

I recently finished writing a book on VirtualBox. Maybe you could put these free excerpts in the VirtualBox Documents list:

Installing VirtualBox on Linux

Creating Your First Virtual Machine: Ubuntu Linux (Part 1)

Creating Your First Virtual Machine: Ubuntu Linux (Part 2)