Quick Start

One page summary of how to get started with Cloud Hypervisor

The following sections describe how to build and run Cloud Hypervisor.

Prerequisites for AArch64

  • AArch64 servers (recommended) or development boards equipped with the GICv3 interrupt controller.

Host OS

For required KVM functionality the minimum host kernel version is 4.11. For adequate performance the minimum recommended host kernel version is 5.6. The majority of the CI currently tests with kernel version 5.15.

Use Pre-built Binaries

The recommended approach to getting started with Cloud Hypervisor is by using a pre-built binary. Binaries are available for the latest release. Use cloud-hypervisor-static for x86-64 or cloud-hypervisor-static-aarch64 for AArch64 platform.

Packages

For convenience, packages are also available targeting some popular Linux distributions. This is thanks to the Open Build Service. The OBS README explains how to enable the repository in a supported Linux distribution and install Cloud Hypervisor and accompanying packages. Please report any packaging issues in the obs-packaging repository.

Building from Source

Please see the instructions for building from source if you do not wish to use the pre-built binaries.

Booting Linux

Cloud Hypervisor supports direct kernel boot (the x86-64 kernel requires the kernel built with PVH support) or booting via a firmware (either Rust Hypervisor Firmware or an edk2 UEFI firmware called CLOUDHV / CLOUDHV_EFI.)

Binary builds of the firmware files are available for the latest release of Rust Hyperivor Firmware and our edk2 repository

The choice of firmware depends on your guest OS choice; some experimentation may be required.

Firmware Booting

Cloud Hypervisor supports booting disk images containing all needed components to run cloud workloads, a.k.a. cloud images.

The following sample commands will download an Ubuntu Cloud image, converting it into a format that Cloud Hypervisor can use and a firmware to boot the image with.

$ wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
$ qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O raw focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw
$ wget https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/rust-hypervisor-firmware/releases/download/0.4.2/hypervisor-fw

The Ubuntu cloud images do not ship with a default password so it necessary to use a cloud-init disk image to customise the image on the first boot. A basic cloud-init image is generated by this script. This seeds the image with a default username/password of cloud/cloud123. It is only necessary to add this disk image on the first boot.

$ sudo setcap cap_net_admin+ep ./cloud-hypervisor
$ ./create-cloud-init.sh
$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./hypervisor-fw \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw path=/tmp/ubuntu-cloudinit.img \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask="

If access to the firmware messages or interaction with the boot loader (e.g. GRUB) is required then it necessary to switch to the serial console instead of virtio-console.

$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./hypervisor-fw \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw path=/tmp/ubuntu-cloudinit.img \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask=" \
	--serial tty \
	--console off

Custom Kernel and Disk Image

Building your Kernel

Cloud Hypervisor also supports direct kernel boot. For x86-64, a vmlinux ELF kernel (compiled with PVH support) is needed. In order to support development there is a custom branch; however provided the required options are enabled any recent kernel will suffice.

To build the kernel:

# Clone the Cloud Hypervisor Linux branch
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/linux.git -b ch-5.15.12 linux-cloud-hypervisor
$ pushd linux-cloud-hypervisor
# Use the x86-64 cloud-hypervisor kernel config to build your kernel for x86-64
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor/main/resources/linux-config-x86_64
# Use the AArch64 cloud-hypervisor kernel config to build your kernel for AArch64
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor/main/resources/linux-config-aarch64
$ cp linux-config-x86_64 .config  # x86-64
$ cp linux-config-aarch64 .config # AArch64
# Do native build of the x86-64 kernel
$ KCFLAGS="-Wa,-mx86-used-note=no" make bzImage -j `nproc`
# Do native build of the AArch64 kernel
$ make -j `nproc`
$ popd

For x86-64, the vmlinux kernel image will then be located at linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/x86/boot/compressed/vmlinux.bin. For AArch64, the Image kernel image will then be located at linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/arm64/boot/Image.

Disk image

For the disk image the same Ubuntu image as before can be used. This contains an ext4 root filesystem.

$ wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img # x86-64
$ wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-arm64.img # AArch64
$ qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O raw focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw # x86-64
$ qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O raw focal-server-cloudimg-arm64.img focal-server-cloudimg-arm64.raw # AArch64

Booting the guest VM

These sample commands boot the disk image using the custom kernel whilst also supplying the desired kernel command line.

  • x86-64
$ sudo setcap cap_net_admin+ep ./cloud-hypervisor
$ ./create-cloud-init.sh
$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/x86/boot/compressed/vmlinux.bin \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw path=/tmp/ubuntu-cloudinit.img \
	--cmdline "console=hvc0 root=/dev/vda1 rw" \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask="
  • AArch64
$ sudo setcap cap_net_admin+ep ./cloud-hypervisor
$ ./create-cloud-init.sh
$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/arm64/boot/Image \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-arm64.raw path=/tmp/ubuntu-cloudinit.img \
	--cmdline "console=hvc0 root=/dev/vda1 rw" \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask="

If earlier kernel messages are required the serial console should be used instead of virtio-console.

  • x86-64
$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/x86/boot/compressed/vmlinux.bin \
	--console off \
	--serial tty \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.raw \
	--cmdline "console=ttyS0 root=/dev/vda1 rw" \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask="
  • AArch64
$ ./cloud-hypervisor \
	--kernel ./linux-cloud-hypervisor/arch/arm64/boot/Image \
	--console off \
	--serial tty \
	--disk path=focal-server-cloudimg-arm64.raw \
	--cmdline "console=ttyAMA0 root=/dev/vda1 rw" \
	--cpus boot=4 \
	--memory size=1024M \
	--net "tap=,mac=,ip=,mask="
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