Linux KVM (kvm-70) on IBM Open Client 2.2

The Linux kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) is a great way for virtualization on computers running Linux. It requires virtualization support by the host processor (most modern x86 CPUs have this) and a kernel module. The kernel module can be built from the KVM sources.

Unfortunately, compiling the module on the IBM Open Client 2.2 distribution doesn't work out of the box. Instead, a patch is required. The patch is an extended version of this commit to the KVM repository and applies against the KVM-70 release tar ball.

Networking

The KVM networking documentation lists brctl(8) and tunctl(8) as requirements for a bridge between the host and the guest. On the Open Client distribution, the brctl utility is part of the bridge-utils package whereas the tunctl tool is part of uml-utils - on other distributions, that is. However, there is a Fedora Core 9 package available which seems to work.

Before starting the KVM guest, make sure that the tun kernel module is loaded. These are the steps I use to start the guest:

$ sudo modprobe tun
$ MACADDR=`genmac`
$ sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -hda freebsd-7.0.img \
   -net nic,macaddr=$MACADDR -net tap,script=qemu-ifup

Note that the genmac and qemu-ifup scripts are the examples from the KVM documentation.

NAT on the bridge

Because I cannot put the KVM guest on the host network, I need to do NAT on the host. I've found this quick tutorial on NAT with iptables. The four steps are:

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
# iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o tap0 -m state \
     --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A FORWARD -i tap0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT

Also, make sure the tap0 interface has an IP address:

$ sudo ifconfig tap0 192.168.0.1/24