IT From All Angles

On March 31, 2010 Microsoft released the beta of version 2.1 of the Linux Integration Components. The Linux ICs allow Linux VMs running on Hyper-V to be “enlightened” and have access to synthetic device drivers which perform much faster than their emulated counter parts. It can be downloaded by registering for the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V on http://connect.microsoft.com

What is new in Linux Integration Components v2.1 Beta?

There are three new features, time sync, shutdown, and SMP. Time sync is communication through the vmbus which updates the guest’s time to match the hosts (without this time is only synced on boot up of the VM). Shutdown simply makes that little shutdown button in Hyper-V Manager work, previously you only had the option of using the Stop command or entering the guest via ssh or some other mechanism and initiating the shutdown. SMP is some fixes in the vmbus module which make the module SMP-safe, and in addition Microsoft will now support Linux guests (RHEL 5.3 & 5.4, and SUSE 10 & 11) with up to 4 vCPUs, previously only 1 vCPU was supported.  InputVSC (Citrix’s Project Satori) will continue to work with this release.

Frustrations of this release…

I am in large part very happy by this new release, there are some problems and some things I wish were addressed. Jumbo Frames are still not included, and I will manage, but it would have been very nice. Additionally I had hoped that they would integrate the InputVSC (Project Satori @ Citrix) into this release as well, and I am not sure why this would not have been possible, according to Satori site it is released under v2 of the GPL. Finally I am irritated that they have not made a move to allow the installer to work with newer kernels. So in order to use Ubuntu/Debian with synthetic devices you need to downgrade to the 2.6.19 kernel as with the old versions. I had hope that they would remove those restrictions and allow you to install it without support.

Also keep in mind that while Integrated Shutdown is supported, it does not work with the SCVMM Management Console, you must use Hyper-V Manager or Powershell Cmdlets.

Update 5/17/2010

About 2 weeks ago Microsoft released a release candidate.  The biggest change in this version is the fixing of the limitation of SCVMM shutdowns.  It allows VMM to detect the Integration Components thus not block the attempted shutdown using the SCVMM GUI.

Installing on RHEL 5.4 x86_64

Install Prerequisites (from install CD rpms)

# cd /media/CDROM/Server

# rpm -i gcc-4.1.2-46.el5.x86_64.rpm kernel-devel-2.6.18-164.el5.x86_64.rpm libgomp-4.4.0-6.el5.x86_64.rpm glibc-devel-2.5-42.x86_64.rpm glibc-headers-2.5-42.x86_64.rpm kernel-headers-2.6.18-164.el5.x86_64.rpm

Attach the iso file to the VM and stage files for install

# mkdir /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta /media/cdrom

# mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

# cp -R /media/cdrom/* /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# cd /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# ./setup.pl drivers

Installing on CentOS 5.4 x86_64

Install Prerequisites (from yum repos)

# yum install gcc kernel-devel

Repair broken symbolic link

# rm /lib/modules/2.6.18-164.el5/build

# ln -s ../../..usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-164.15.1.el5-x86_64

Attach the iso file to the VM and stage files for install

# mkdir /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta /media/cdrom

# mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

# cp -R /media/cdrom/* /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# cd /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# ./setup.pl drivers

Installing on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 x86_64

Install Prequesites (from yum repos)

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d

# wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

# nano /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-el5.repo

Update the section labeled [el5_u4_base] to reflect enabled=1

# yum install gcc kernel-devel

Attach the iso file to the VM and stage files for install

# mkdir /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta /media/cdrom

# mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

# cp -R /media/cdrom/* /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# cd /opt/linux_ic_2.1beta/

# ./setup.pl drivers

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components on RHEL and CentOS
2. Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components (v2) on Oracle Enterprise Linux
3. Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components Ubuntu and Debian
4. Hyper-V Guests: Mouse Integration on Linux VMs
5. Hyper-V Guests: Compile Linux Kernel 2.6.32 on Debian