Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Para-virtualized Drivers Guide

Jan Mark Holzer

Red Hat
 Emerging Technology Group

Don Dutile

Red Hat
 Emerging Technology Group

Barry Donahue

Red Hat
 Quality Assurance Group

Edited by

Chris Curran

Red Hat
 Engineering Content Services

Copyright © 2008 Red Hat, Inc.

Legal Notice
Abstract

This document will explain how to install, configure and troubleshoot the para-virtualized drivers for networking and storage I/O in Red Hat Enterprise Linux HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) full-virtualized guests. Para-virtualized drivers offer increased performance for fully virtualized Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests.

It is assumed the reader is familiar with system administration tasks associated with software installation and configuration in Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment.

Preface
1. Document Conventions
2. We Need Your Feedback
1. Introduction to Para-virtualized Drivers
1.1. System requirements
2. Para-virtualization Restrictions and Support
3. Installation and Configuration of Para-virtualized Drivers
3.1. Common installation steps
4. Installation and Configuration of Para-virtualized Drivers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
5. Installation and Configuration of Para-virtualized Drivers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
6. Installation and Configuration of Para-virtualized Drivers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
7. Para-virtualized Network Driver Configuration
8. Additional Para-virtualized Hardware Configuration
8.1. Virtualized Network Interfaces
8.2. Virtual Storage Devices
9. Troubleshooting Para-virtualized Drivers
9.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Virtualization log file and directories
9.2. Para-virtualized guest fail to load on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 guest operating system
9.3. A warning message is displayed while installing the para-virtualized drivers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
9.4. What to do if the guest operating system has been booted with virt-manager or virsh
9.5. Manually loading the para-virtualized drivers
9.6. Verifying the para-virtualized drivers have successfully loaded
9.7. The system has limited throughput with para-virtualized drivers
10. Compiling para-virtualized driver packages from source code
11. Additional Information Links
A. Revision History