Libvirtd on Arm Processors

I haven't posted to blogger in a long, long time. I am going to use this as a backup, but I will be posting on terrorpup.net

I have two labs. I have a half rack of servers that I run a number of virts on baremetal. I use openSUSE TumbleWeed running libvirtd and qemu. I have great luck with those servers. Simple and free. The secondary lab is my collections of Small Computer boards. Which limits what I run there, because even though Arm Processors are coming along, not everything is supported.

My Goal

I am not into docker, not because I don't like it. I just didn't have time to learn it fully. Docker, and no offence it changes quicker than Ruby does. ( That's a joke, if you have worked Ruby you will understand that. ) I do have a couple pi's running dockers images apps, Heimdall and GitLab. What I want to do was to see was to see if I can host virtual machines on a Small Board Computer (SBC).

Why yes, yes it can

So I googled what it would take to run virtual machines using libvirtd on Pi, I figure that would be the easiest. One thing that Pi's have shown everyone that you can emulate systems using software. Virtualization should be easy. I got lucky I found a post from a few years ago.

Raspberry Pi 4

To start, you will need a Raspberry Pi 4 8 gigs. Debian, RapsberryOS, or Armbian. Make sure that it also 64-bit version of the OS. The post that found stated that it can do it with a 4 gigs, but the performances was horrilble. The other thing I am going to recommend is to use NVMe or SSD storage with your pi because SD I/O slow. I have Argon M2 case, with 256 Gigbyte NVMe in it. Another option is to use a Pi Hat that can use 2.5" Hard Drive.
Let's check to see if the kernel can run virts. Run the following command.

uname -r

If the kernel returns x.x.x-v7l+, then we need to update the config.txt. Before any changes are made, make a backup of the file.

vim /boot/config.txt

At the bottom of the file, add the following line

arm_64bit=1

Next make sure the OS is up-to-date.

sudo apt update && apt full-upgrade
sudo reboot

Once the Pi is back up, check the kernel, it need to show the following, x.x.xx-v*+
Last thing to make sure kvm device that is used by libvirtd is there.

sudo ls -lh /dev/kvm

If it shows, it's time to install software that is needed to be install. NOTE: This will be used for Ordroid as well

sudo apt install virt-manager libvirt0 qemu-system

Libvirtd needs to be ran by a user who is a member of the libvirt-qemu group. Then reboot so that the change takes effect.

sudo usermod -aG libvirt-qemu $(whoami)
sudo reboot

Once the pi is back up, let's set the service to auto-start at bootup. Setup the private network to start. 192.168.122.0/24

sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd
sudo virsh netstart default
sudo virsh net-autostart default


Odroid M1

I want to try a more modern board. This year I had purchase two Odroid M1. The first I can't use because it running Debian 10, there is no /dev/kvm, plus it running on a SD card. Remember disk i/o matters with virtual hosts. My second is the one that I used. I found that Debian 11 does have the kvm device needed, and I had installed the OS on NVMe. The processor is a Rock Chip which in the SBC work is getting great praise for it's performance. Last thing, this SBC has 8 gigs of memory.

The Ordroid M1 is a lot easier.

Recommendation
* M1 - 8 Gig
* NVMe or emmc - Size should be 128 Gigs =<
* Debian 11/Ubuntu 22

Later I write blog later how to use petitboot to install Debian 11. The kernel as noted is already setup to run kvm's. So there no need to change any boot files.

Follow instruction above now to install the software.

Creating a virtaul machine

I was a bit disappointing because the virtual host on the PI from the post that I followed, would only boot up in text mode. If anything with graphics would show on the screen they were displayed as ASCII charaters. This will impossible to install modern versions of Linux. The post that I had followed, used Al[one with virtual image, instead of ISO. I will show that is need to be added so that graphicals will come up. It was one the first things I tested when I got software for virt-manager installed.

Need to download an iso, need to make sure it Arm (aarch64). I have not tried to run X86 Machine, with Qemu you can run other processor. I know a few folks that run PowerPC with Qemu so they can work with Mac OS.

Once the iso is download copy it to the following directory. For this post I will be using openSUSE Tumbleweed. I have tried Fedora 37 and Red Hat Enterprise 9. This blog will assume that you are using X.

cp Downloads/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-aarch64-Snapshot20221024-Media.iso /var/lib/libvirt/images

Launch Virt-Manager, the icon of the computer with star on it.

The first window will be what media to select. Here select "Local install media (ISO image or CDROM) click on "Forward"

Next need to select the iso that was copied over. Click on "Browse..."

CLick on the iso that will be used and click on "Choose Volume", then uncheck "Automatically..." at the bottom. Click on the Magify glass and select the OS that will be used. Click on "Forward"

Unlike a baremetal server, a lot of memory can't be allocated to the virt, so choose what best for the OS that being installed. With openSUSE Tumbleweed, we will use 2 Gigs ( 2048 ) and two cores. Once the memory and cpu has been selected, click on "Forward"

Before launching the virtual machine, click on "Customize configuration before install", a few things need to be add to launch with graphic support, click on "Finish" Click on add hardware

Click on on Video, change Vitro to VGA then click on "Finish"

Need to add usb devices...
USB Table

USB Keyboard

USB Mouse

Graphics

Select Graphics. I am going to recommend VNC over Spice. Both are great, but Spice seem to be jumpy when the mouse is moved. VNC seem to be stable and the mouse doesn't jump all over the place.

Now that extra items that would normally be there if x86_64 was being used. Make sure that the hardward for the virtual machone looks like the following.

Click on "Begin Installation". Now, the boot up process it going to take a while, I have tested with three OS'es, the boot up time was about the same. Once iso boot's up, you will see the following screen below.

I will post a blog later to example how to setup a bridge device with "NetworkManager", for now the virtual network that was setup early will connect to internet via NAT'ing. Click on "Open", then click on "NIC xx:xx:xx", there the IP should show, it should be "192.168.122.0/24"

If NAT'ing is working correctly it will go out and connect to online repos.

Moving along, select a desktop, XFCE ( X Face ), it's light weight, works great. Usually recommend using WindowMaker, a NeXTStep clone that very light weight.

Setup the partition, for this demo, setup with autoselect was is best.

Select the time zone

Setup a users

If everything looks good, need to select install twice, to begin the installation.

The installation will now run and once done, the virtual machine will reboot. Grub shows a black screen, I haven't figured out why, but after a few mintues XFCE4 desktop will pop up.

Libvirtd, kvm ( Kernel Virtual Machine ). With the Pi, because I only have 4 gigs, I was only able to get the Alpine up and running and the perforamces was again, hobbile. The M1 can only run a few machines because the limit of the memory of the board. I was able to run three virtual machines up and running at the same time.

My Odroid M1 has NVMe M2 with 256 GB of space. So each virtual machines setup with the following...

50 Gig Hard Drive
4 Cores ( This is the max cores for Odroid )
2 Gigs

The load and memory on the Odroid M1 has been good, the small board computer hasn't been taxed nor has the system performace taking a hit.

Thoughs

The real nice thing about using Small Board Computer(SBC), the power. Where I love using my baremetal servers, dual 700 Watt power, create a lot of noise and heat. In my house it does drive up my power bill. Where the Odroid is using 20W power supply. I am hoping that in the future SBC will have more cores and memory. I like to try a Khadas board. They have several boards that could be great, like the Khadas Edge 2, 16 Gigs of memory and 8 course of memory.

Is this helpful? I know most people are moving away from virtual machine to docker, because of the power use, number of images that can be ran. There is trade off. One, a lot of vendor are force people to use containers so you don't know what in the image unless you know enought about docker compser to open image and example them. I am not one for blind trust. I am seeing a day were someone get hold of docker images and placing a back door and it months later that it found. With a virtual it is a bit more secure, but software that is download or install could have that same back door.

Please leave a comment.Thank you for reading this...

---

Note: I love to test the following with other boards. If you are a board makering. Please reach out to me, I love to review and test...

openSUSE Newletter 90

openSUSE Weekly News 90 is availabe. Read the full issue: http://2tu.us/uix

Saving this...

I have started speaking for openSUSE, this is from my talk to the A.L.E, I am really loving going out as Ambassador for openSUSE.

=====================================================================================

ALE CENTRAL MTG. for Thurs., Aug. 20th, 2009

Filed at 12:42 am under ALE Central and Announcements and Uncategorized by Ruscetta


The feature presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
at 7:30pm on Thursday, Aug. 20th, 2009 will be:

“Open SUSE: The State of the Disavowed Distro”
with Chuck Payne, Atlanta regional OpenSUSE Ambassador
==

Synopsis:
– Despite extensive concerns and criticisms from the Free Software
community regarding SUSE’s partnership deals with Novel and the
dangerous precedents of their concessions to the extortionist FUD
campaigns of MicroSoft, the OpenSUSE project has continued to be
an important contributing developer in the global GNU Linux and
Open Source arenas. SUSE’s recently appointed volunteer ambassador
for our region, Chuck Payne, will bring us up to date on the features
and strengths of current OpenSUSE 11.1 offering and talk about
enhancements scheduled for the pending 11.2 release.

Bio:
– Chuck “PUP” Payne has been working with computers since
his parents gave him an Atari 130XE for his 16th birthday
[ed - (: presumably misunderstanding his actual requests for
a Commodore Amiga :) ]. He has since worked with personal
computer platforms ranging from Atari and Apple to Mac and
PC, and has explored various operating environments including
Linux, BeOS, Solaris, FreeBSD and others. He has been
working with GNU Linux since 1998, when he bought a book on
Slackware ‘96. After Slackware he tried out Red Hat, then
moved to openSUSE with their 1998 5.3 release and he has
stayed with the SUSE choice since.

Computers also became central to Chuck’s career, and he has
worked as a System Administrator since 1998. He is currently
employed by Travel Channel Media as a Unix Systems Admin,
where day to day tasks include managing TCM’s DNS, 70+ Red
Hat Linux Servers, 20 Solaris Servers, and a handful of Mac
XServers. He also helps out with web development in the areas
of Apache and JBOSS administration.

In April 2009 Chuck’s application to be a regional volunteer
ambassador for OpenSUSE was accepted, facilitating his goals
of helping people discover the benefits of Free Software,
GNU/Linux and the OpenSUSE distributions. In his free time he
bolsters his geek cred by writing bash scripts or php code,
hacking hardware in his home gadget lab, and watching any
and all Zombie flicks that cross his path.

Related Links:
– OpenSUSE.org

=============
We will be meeting at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
via the side bar link.

Working on my network.

One of the reason that I started a Magi Blog, was the fact that I been losing a lot of boxes. I am not sure if why, for the most part is the age of the boxes. Most are over 6 years old. So about ever three most I am losing a box.

Currently I got one box down due to a power supply issue. I need to go get one, but money is tight. I use to have extra money coming in for doing Linux work on the side, but here lately even that is drying up.

I now am working on a plan to go thru each box update everything then take a snap shot, so in the even I do lose it I can easy replace it.

I am even think about if I can ever get the money to replace all my boxes with nice tower with dual quad core cpu and about 8 gigs of memory and about 4 Terabyes of storage. A box like that would replace easy five servers.

PROJECT -- zyppercron

I have started a little project called zyppercron, it a simple shell script that will got out get a list of the scripts packages that are flagged for update then gets file details. This script is base on apticron, but since I don't have a debain box, I am writing all the code base on the emails I have seen from it.

Sample of the output, it I have ready for prime time I will attach the download

 

zyppercron report [Wed Nov 12 23:06:32 EST 2008] 
=======================================================================

zyppercron has detected that the following packages need upgrading on:

           magi.magidesign.com  

            [ 192.168.105.2 192.168.106.2 216.47.87.18 ] 

The following packages are currently ready to be download and install

 aaa_base       
 apache2        
 enscript       
 exiv2          
 flash-player   
 graphviz       
 kernel         
 kpowersave     
 libcdaudio     
 libgadu        
 libgnomecanvas 
 libsatsolver   
 libzypp        
 lvm2           
 openldap2      
 opera          
 opera          
 opera          
 pam_mount      
 perl-Socket6   
 sudo           
 timezone       
 timezone       
 tsclient       
 yelp           
 yum            

=======================================================================

Reading installed packages...


Information for package aaa_base:

Repository: openSUSE-11.0-Updates
Name: aaa_base
Version: 11.0-79.4
Arch: i586
Vendor: SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nuernberg, Germany
Installed: Yes
Status: out-of-date (version 11.0-79.2 installed)
Installed Size: 315.0 K
Summary: SUSE Linux Base Package
Description: 
This package installs several important configuration files. Central
scripts like SuSEconfig are also in this package.

Information for package apache2:

Repository: openSUSE-11.0-Updates
Name: apache2
Version: 2.2.8-28.2
Arch: i586
Vendor: SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nuernberg, Germany
Installed: Yes
Status: out-of-date (version 2.2.8-28.1 installed)
Installed Size: 2.1 M
Summary: The Apache Web Server Version 2.0
Description: 
Apache 2, the successor to Apache 1.

Apache is the most used Web server software worldwide.

Some new features in Apache 2: - hybrid multiprocess, multithreaded
   mode for improved scalability

- multiprotocol support

- stream filtering

- IPv6 support

- new module API

New modules include: - mod_auth_db

- mod_auth_digest

- mod_charset_lite

- mod_dav

- mod_file_cache

Mod_ssl is no longer a separate package, but is now included in the
Apache distribution.

See /usr/share/doc/packages/apache2/, http://httpd.apache.org/, and
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/upgrading.html.

Magi Design Project

I have set up this blog to follow projects that I am working. I am using blogger.com, because of the recent problem I had with get my service move. I don't blame Abraxis. I blame ATT. So I will mirror my main site here.

http://www.magidesign.com

I will also try in the next few weeks list the projects I am working.

--PUP