Latitude D820 +Virtualization

[Victor Lowther]

On 11/18/06, Art Fore <art.fore at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I Purchased as new D820 w/T7600 Core 2 Duo processor and 2 Gig ram 3
> weeks ago with the intent of using Xen virtualization under Linux to run
> WinXP under Linux. The reason for purchasing this machine was that I had
> read many articles on the internet thhat this model had virtualization
> capabilities built in. So far, that seems to be false.


Stupid question, I know, but have you tried following the instructions at
http://www.xensource.com/files/xen_install_windows.pdf ?

I have tried both Suse 10.1, 10.2, and Fedora FC6 both 64-bit and
> 32-bit. Xen kernel starts fine etc. but installing another operating
> system is a no go whether Windows or another linux distribution in the
> full virtualization mode. The Linux virtual machine does not even
> complete installation in the paravirtualization mode. In all cases, the
> installation gets to a certain point, then hangs.


What point does it hang at?  If you are installing a Linux distro that
uses a Xen guest kernel in a virtual machine according to the
instructions that come with the Xen packages, then it should work
regardless of whether the processor supports VM or not.

I upgraded the bios from A03 to A04 with no change. I ran the Intel
> firmware check program supplied on the Suse 10.2 installation DVD and it
> came up with 6 errors in the bios implimentation. Do not have the
> knowledge to know if these are the cause of the problem or not. Tried
> saving the report to USB disk, but like other things on this machine, it
> does not work. I also noted that the one time boot function (F12) is a
> hit or miss process. It will go to the CDROM to boot, but then just
> hang. Have to reboot and hit the F12 key several times usually to get it
> to work.


What are the errors that it comes up with?


> Tried contacting the Dell Tech support, but here in Taiwan, the chinese
> english from the Dell support here is unintelligible. Called tech
> support in the states, they could not find the service tag or express
> service # on their system, even though I can see it from my account
> there and it shows the configuration of the system. When asked about
> virtualization, they ask what is virtualization? Does not say much for
> Dell tech support. BTW, the virtualization is enabled in the BIOS.


It seems to work fine for me -- I am beta testing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
and VMWare Workstation 6, and both of those products detect and use
the hardware virtualization capabilities of the core duo proc on my D820.


> Does anyone have any suggestions or should I just return the machine and
> search for one that works with Virtualization?


The hardware virtualization of the machine should work fine, but I do not
have
any familiarity with making it work with Xen (and no opportunity to try
right now --
gotta familiarize myself with Vista).  Based on what you have described
so far, I would try to get Linux on Linux working in Xen first -- the fact
that it does
not seem to be working for you indicates that something in your Xen config
is
incorrect (which, from my experience running virtual servers on top of it,
is easy to do).

You may also want to run a full hardware diagnostics on the system and/or
memtest86
just to verify that the hardware is working as designed -- Xen seems to be a
really
good hardware stress tester, even more so than just installing Linux or
Windows.


Art


Victor Lowther
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