I have a laptop that I am running virtualbox on. I am running centos as the host os and centos as a virtual machine. I am doing this to learn centos/redhat without breaking my main centos. the issue is virtual box does not give me the ability to setup a networking manually that meets my needs. I tried kvm on my main (ubuntu desktop) computer and was able to do the following. I created a private netwwork 10.x.x.x and then installed centos 5.4 on that. I was able to setup networking manually on centos which is what I want. I actually set up 2 centos boxes as vm's and they could both ping each other and get to the internet by specifying the first ip on the network (the 10.x.x.x) as the gateway and dns server. also I could ping the host (hmm if I am recalling correctly) ubuntu from the vm and ping the vm from ubuntu even though the ubuntu is on a 192.169.x.x. network. I could not do this with virtual box and was doing things like installing a nat network adapter and a host only network adapter...it was not what I wanted.

does anyone know if the setup I have working on my desktop (main host 192.168.x.x network vm network 10.x.x.x manual setup) would work on a laptop that will be used via dhcp at home/library etc??? kvm on the desktop just seems to "know" the active network and the manually configured network on the vm has all connectivity to it. this is what I want as I need to learn all the networking files etc. plus I like the simplicity of kvm more. I will have to upgrade the processor on my laptop (hp pavilion dv2000) as unfortunately it appears to be the only dual core that does not support xen...obviously I do not want to go through this process if kvm will not work seemlessly with my private kvm network connecting to my host dhcp enabled wireless network. thank you for listening...

There should be no problem with the setup on any computer. KVM which uses qemu sets up network on its own. Heres a link to the network options one can setup within qemu.

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Networking

Regarding the cpu upgrade I guess you mixed up two words. In the second last line you write that your cpu is not ready for XEN? To check if your CPU is able to use KVM do a lscpu or cat /proc/cpuinfo. Look for the processor flags to either read svm or vmx depnding on the manufactor of the chip

should do the trick

thanks, yea I meant kvm, it is not supported, its is an intel t2250 1.73ghz. I need to shop for another cpu...

if I can do this kvm like I want to it will be worth the upgrade, again thanks for the info...

None of my buisness but I would think thoroughly if I'd buy a new CPU in this case. See that as long as you only virtualisate (correct english?) only open source OS's Xen does the job as nearly as fast as KVM. Full virtualisation vs Para virtualisation are the keywords. You would just need a XEN enabled kernel which nearly every distro brings along.
Maybe buy a new labtop alltogether? Dunno how big your wallet is. But like I said none of my buisness. If any more questions are up keep em coming.

Cheers Zhjim

and I don't need a special processor for xen???

Right XEN does not need the virtualisation features of new CPU. It's paravirtualisation. But with a bit more speed than vmware. And like any good *nix programm its free

If you have some spare time check this link. Its a comparison of diffrent virtualisation possibibilities.

thanks I tried it, my sound was lost and it too 3x longer to boot.

How you went about? Used yum to get the xen kernel? Did you check that it also loads the kernel module for your soundcard?
Maybe diff the lsmod of the both kernel to see if they differ?