[colug-432] KVM management

[R P Herrold]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2012, Joshua Kramer wrote:

> One thing to consider when using KVM with Windows guests is the
> drivers.  KVM has hardware support for virtualized VGA and IDE
> interfaces; however, those are slow.  In their place are "hardware"
> components called QXL and VIRTIO.  There are kernel drivers for most
> modern Linux distributions for these devices, so when you set up a VM
> you can select those right off the bat.

There is an upstream: virtio-win

My notes indicate that:
 	http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/
is a prime site, and I anticipate experimenting on this as 
well

My _real_ goal here is to see if I can get Windows 95 and 
Windows NT 3.51 into KVM VM's -- the 'virt-p2v' migration 
tools turn up their nose and sniff at such an old pair of 
installations ... but they are the last physical Windows boxes 
at my office, used to run an ancient QuickBooks Pro, and a 
third-party HP-PCL print-driver interceptor that spits out 
bank-ready MICR line check images

For historical reasons (small drives of the era) I used 
'network neighborhood' SMB file directory sharing to get the 
space I needed at the time.  Ditto, SMB printer drivers, as 
Windows 95 did not really want to do LPR back at that era

Intuit has a relentless 'upgrade treadmill' so I have not much 
hope in moving thirty years of check register data into the 
present, AND still write my own MICR checks on blank 
checkstock.  But mebbe KVM will get me there

-- Russ herrold