# kvm installing

## idella4

Greetings,  this is a fairly intricate and non critical issue.

I have qemu-kvm installed and it works quite well, until this system.

I have a solaris 10 dvd I acquired quite a few years ago, so out if interest, I installed a solaris vm.

Firstly into xen, eventually, and it took an age.

I have a space problem in the xen install (other thread).  I'm trying out a kvm install to compare and as an alternate resource.  kvm is generally pretty slick, but it seems to have met its match.

To anyone who has tried this, should kvm handle solaris ok?  In my system, it's clean bowled it.

Step 1 is boot the kernel.  It does that. For solaris, step 2 is running configuration assistant, screen displays 

running configuration assistant.  

It then, best way of describing, hangs.  Using the virt-manager console and looking at performance, the cpu usage charges on at around 50%.  The console screen output just stops.  All this activity for no result.  Going on xen's similar performance, it might eventually progress after a prolonged interval.

So, generally kvm outperforms qemu solo.  I have only installed 2 vms with qemu, and that was enough.  I took all day and several attempts.  With virt-manager and virtinst, you have the option of which hypervisor to install the vm under.  kvm generally installs smoothly, until this.

I've repeated this a number of times now, taking all day. Choosing qemu, it actually moves on to booting up and reading the hardware to prepare for the install.  Although slow, it makes progress, but sure enough it more or less freezes or hangs half way through the install.  I've ended up abandoning a number of attempts.

I'm redoing it now, and it's clearly going to take all day to effect the install.  If I give it a fairly generous

memory allocation, it attempts a gui type set of install screens which promptly fail and it aborts.  It has to have a smaller allocation to keep to console screens, which don't fail.  It is so slow it doesn't seem worth the effort, usable at such a poor performance.  It's only usable if I can boot it with kvm once installed.

In time, I will try a current solaris version, however it will have to wait 2 weeks.  The internet speed is capped and strangled and not downloading dvd's at modem speed.

edit:

It's been 10 hours, and the qemu is half way through installing solaris.  sheeeeesh.  Totally too slow.

Has anyone ever found qemu solo as an effective host of vms?

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