• New KVM features in RHEL 9.2 and 8.8 on IBM Z

    A couple of weeks ago, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 have been release – time to look at the new features here with regards to KVM virtualization on IBM Z systems. Rebased versions in RHEL 9.2 The KVM code in the 5.14-based kernel of...

  • How to migrate bug tickets from Launchpad to Gitlab

    For a long time, the QEMU project hosted its git repository on their own server and used Launchpad for tracking bugs. The self-hosting of the git repository caused some troubles, so the project switched the main repository to Gitlab in January 2021. That change of course also triggered the question...

  • Improved KVM virtualization with RHEL 9 on IBM Z

    This week, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 has been announced, which will also bring us lots of new stuff for our beloved mainframe. First, compared with RHEL 8, a lot of generic packages have been updated, of course. For example, RHEL 9 on IBM Z comes with: Linux kernel 5.14...

  • How to check your shell scripts for portability

    This blog is mainly a reminder for myself for the various possibilities to check my shell scripts for portability, but maybe it’s helpful for some other people, too. First, why bother? Well, while bash is the default /bin/sh shell on many rpm-based Linux distributions (so it’s also the default shell...

  • QEMU Advent Calendar 2020 starts

    Starting today, on December 1st, the first door of the QEMU Advent Calendar 2020 can now be opened! The advent calendar reveals a new disk image or something similar for download on each of the first 24 days in December 2020, to create a fun experience for the QEMU community,...

  • Secure Execution for zKVM Introduction and Demo

    The recent generation of the mainframe (i.e. the z15) has the possibility to run protected KVM guests, so that the administrator of the host LPAR does not have the possibility anymore to read or alter the memory of a guest. This feature is called “Secure Execution” on the IBM Z....

  • How to speed up your QEMU development cycles

    Here’s another bunch of tips for QEMU developer – if you are not working with the QEMU source code, you can certainly ignore this article. Compiling QEMU is a tedious action, since it takes quite some time to compile the whole code base. But with some basic tricks, you can...

  • How to create small VMs with buildroot

    A couple of times I already ran into the situation that I wanted to provide a small guest disk image to other people. For example, one time I wanted to provide a test application like LTP to colleagues via a server where I only had some limited disk quota available....

  • QEMU Advent Calendar 2018 opened the first door

    Starting today, on December 1st, the first door of the QEMU Advent Calendar 2018 can now be opened! The advent calendar reveals a new disk image for download on each of the first 24 days in December 2018, to create a fun experience for the QEMU community, to celebrate the...

  • QEMU Advent Calendar 2018 website online

    This year, we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of QEMU (QEMU 0.1 was announced in March 2003), and to contribute to this celebration, we will have another edition of the QEMU Advent Calendar this year. The new website for the advent calendar is now online at www.qemu-advent-calendar.org – but please...