[vbox-dev] How to compile linux kernel to work best on VirtualBox

[Frank Mehnert]

On Friday 26 August 2011 17:06:36 Ribhi Kamal wrote:
> Assume that VirtualBox is running on a host (Windows/linux) without any
> support for hardware virtualization (think netbooks).
> 
> Is there anything I can do from a linux guest to improve performance? In
> other words, does it matter how the guest linux kernel was compiled? If so,
> what options can I enable/disable/adjust to improve performance?

Yes. Compile the kernel as non-SMP kernel and switch off as many options
which are responsible for code patching as possible. Enabling SMP support
is one option which uses code patching on recent Linux kernels (to
improve performance on non-SMP systems). Code patching of the guest
kernel always induces additional virtualization overhead.

Kind regards,

Frank
-- 
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert
Senior Manager Software Development Desktop Virtualization, VirtualBox
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