A question about the future of qemu package

[Patrick List]

On 10/31/2009 04:03 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:30:49 +0000
> Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>
>> * upgrade your hardware
>> but be VERY CAREFUL to pick the processor correctly; test it for vmx flag using
>> LiveCD before buying (cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep vmx)
>
> A system at work said I did have the vmx flag (actually there is a different
> flag for AMD chips as well), but I still couldn't use kvm. Finally discovered
> strange BIOS setting that would only take effect after a power cycle. So
> not only do you need the chip support, you need a BIOS that allows you to
> enable it (and the cpuinfo test won't check for that). I have heard
> horror stories of BIOS version which refuse to offer the ability to enable
> the feature (but never personally seen one), so merely checking vmx may
> not be enough.

Sony Vaio laptops have this disabled in their BIOS in spite of the cpu 
in the laptop having vmx support. Quite ridiculous. So make sure you 
indeed check both the vmx support in the cpu *and* that it is not 
disabled by the BIOS because some Marketing drone thought it "enhances" 
the customer experience. How do they come up with these silly ideas...

Regards,
Patrick