On 03.11.2009, at 07:34, Avi Kivity wrote:

On 11/03/2009 08:27 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:

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How does it work today?

You boot into a TERM=dumb line based emulation on 3270 (worst thing  
haunting people's nightmares ever), trying to get out of that mode  
as quickly as possible and off into SSH / VNC.

Despite the coolness factor, IMO a few minutes during install time  
do not justify a new hardware model and a new driver.

It's more than just coolness factor. There are use cases out there (www.susestudio.com 
) that don't want to rely on the guest exporting a VNC server to the  
outside just to access graphics. You also want to see boot messages,  
have a console login screen, be able to debug things without switching  
between virtio-console and vnc, etc. etc.

The hardware model isn't exactly new either. It's just the next  
logical step to a full PV machine using virtio. If the virtio-fb stuff  
turns out to be really fast and reliable, I could even imagine it  
being the default target for kvm on ppc as well, as we can't switch  
resolutions on the fly there atm.

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Does installation over vnc work?

Yes, but it requires a working network setup. That's a pretty  
requirement on guests IMHO.

Why?  the guest will typically have networking when it's set up, so  
it should have network access during install.  You can easily use  
slirp redirection and the built-in dhcp server to set this up with  
relatively few hassles.

That's how I use it right now. It's no fun.


Alex