KVM GPL Windows XP Block driver update

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Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 23:09 Haydn Solomon

Yesterday an update was made to the kvm windows guest drivers GPL code repository to fix broken compilation of viostor for windows xp. The last commit back in November 2009 provided performance improvements for Windows XP block drivers but ironically broke the windows XP compilation. This is the reason why the last set of block drivers I posted for download did not include any for windows xp, only for 2003 and 2008. Personally, I have never been able to successfully install the GPL block drivers on Windows XP 32-bit guest until now.

Below you will find the block drivers for windows xp in ISO format that you can mount in your KVM windows XP guest virtual machine as a cdrom. To install the block drivers follow instructions outlined in this previous post. It's a bit of a long process but it works. I haven't tested installing these drivers during installation of windows xp guest yet. I'll test this and provide an update in another post.

Please give these drivers a test on your kvm windows xp 32-bit guest. As usual you're welcomed to post comments and questions.

Attachment	Size
viostor-xp-2010-02-06.iso	582 KB

Comments

Thank you, Haydn. I'll try to

Monday, February 8, 2010 - 03:19 gateKeeper

Thank you, Haydn.
I'll try to use the driver. Unfortunately, still I can't correctly launch virtio block device even for w2k3 by some reason. It works if I use virt-manager, but doesn't work if I try to launch it directly from shell ((

gatekeeper, See my answer in

Monday, February 8, 2010 - 23:20 Haydn Solomon

gatekeeper,

See my answer in the forums at the following link

http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/can-not-start-use-virtio-blk-driver-even-w2k3#comment-1030

i tried this drivers in

Thursday, March 11, 2010 - 14:46 scop1971 (not verified)

i tried this drivers in Win2003 Server 32bit and all is working good.

Works fine ... but !

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 07:01 Anonymous (not verified)

Hello,

I am able to create an additional disk (foo.img) that uses the virtio interface and it works really fine (I am able to format and use the newly created image) :

kvm -vga std -drive file=xp.img,if=ide -drive file=foo.img,if=virtio

So I get the virtio drivers installed correctly and working fine, however, when I switch the first image to virtio like the following:

kvm -vga std -drive file=xp.img,if=virtio

then my XP VM won't even start : I get the following error message inside kvm :

<<
Booting from Hard Disk...
Boot failed: could not read the boot disk
>>

I guess there is something related to ide/scsi (and that virtio works through scsi), so any help in getting this work would be appreciated !

Thanks

Re: Works Fine ... but!

Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 00:15 Haydn Solomon

Are you using the boot=on argument with your system disk? ie

kvm -vga std -drive file=xp.img,if=virtio,boot=on

Hello, I tried the boot=on

Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 05:46 Anonymous (not verified)

Hello,

I tried the boot=on and now it boots fine and works perfectly with the virtio block driver on my XP VM !! I noticed a huge increase in speed during copy/paste file transfers !!

Thanks Haydn !

This driver works under Windows 2000 also

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 03:09 MossySF (not verified)

I was able to install it under Win2K. The disk device shows up 8X but I activated just a single instance of the drive. Works like a charm. With VirtIO and BlockIO, we had a virtualized server run even faster than the same hardware under native Windows!

We will run it nonstop for a few weeks to see if there are any problems with corruption or crashes but at this point, it looks pretty good.

Re: The driver works under Windows 2000 also

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 05:32 Haydn Solomon

MossySF

Thanks for reporting on this since I don't have any windows 2000 guests for testing.