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VMI support in lenny kernel 2.6.26-2-686



Short version:

Does a stock 2.6.26-2-686 32-bit lenny kernel have vmi support compiled in?


Longer version:

I make heavy use of VMWare Server 2 on a 64-bit lenny host, 32-bit guests.

I was looking at ways to improve performance and noticed that VMI Paravirtualization was not turned on. I did some searching and found that VMWare disables VMI support via a setting in the VMX file, depending on the guest OS selection.

I did some more searching and found this page:
http://www.electricrelaxation.com/2007/05/27/building-a-vmi-enabled-kernel-for-debian-lenny-testing

According to this, if VMI is enabled, I should see the following in dmesg:

vmi: registering clock event vmi-timer. mult=11715026 shift=22
Booting paravirtualized kernel on vmi
vmi: registering clock source khz=2793080
Time: vmi-timer clocksource has been installed.

After adding the line manually in the vmx file and verifying that it stuck around after a restart, I'm not seeing the above listed lines in dmesg.

I pulled the needed packages for compiling a kernel and checked the menuconfig file, VMI is enabled per that file.

So either I'm missing something, or the stock 32-bit kernel doesn't have it already compiled. I would normally compile and try, but I don't want to potentially break a perfectly good working system, and it's almost 5AM my time and I need to get to sleep.


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