linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware guest detection for x86 and x86-64

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Date:	Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:13:14 +0300
From:	Cristi Magherusan <cristi.magherusan@....utcluj.ro>
To:	Yan Li <elliot.li.tech@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, joerg.roedel@....com,
	rjmaomao@...il.com, Yinghai Lu <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, nancydreaming@...il.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware guest detection for x86 and x86-64

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 22:23 +0800, Yan Li wrote: 
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 05:10:24PM +0300, Cristi Magherusan wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 20:22 +0800, Yan Li wrote:
> > > Detects whether we are running as a VMware guest or not. Detection is
> > > based upon DMI vendor string.
> > > 
> > > It provides a function:
> > > int is_vmware_guest(void)
> > > that can be used easily to detect if we are running as a VMware guest
> > > or not.
> > 
> > We can also use this feature to force the HZ value to 100 or 250 at most
> > when running in a virtual environment, since VirtualBox had some issues
> > with this by taking a lot of CPU time when the HZ was set to 1000.
> 
> That's good. But this function is used for detecting VMware guest
> only.  Do you think VMware also suffers from this problem?
> 
I don't know for sure about VMware, but someone who has it installed can
try it. I had this issue with a CentOS 5-server virtual machine
downloaded from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/

The fix consisted in using a kernel compiled with the HZ value set to
100 instead of the default which was 1000.

Cristi

-- 
Cristi Măgherușan,
Inginer de sistem/retea
Universitatea Tehnică din Cluj-Napoca
Centrul de Comunicații "Pusztai Kalman"
Tel. 0264/401247  http://cc.utcluj.ro

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