Installation guide

Follow the same procedure for Windows Server 2003, but when the installer prompts
you for the driver, click on Lo ad D ri ver, point the installer to D ri ve A: and pick
the driver that suits your guest operating system and architecture.
10.4 . Using t he virt io drivers wit h Red Hat Ent erprise Linux 3.9 guest s
Virtio drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.9 consist of five kernel modules: vi rti o , vi rti o _bl k,
vi rti o_net, vi rti o _pci and vi rti o _ri ng . All five modules must be loaded to use both the
virtio block and network devices drivers.
Important
For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.9 guests, the kmod-virtio package is a requirement for the
vi rti o module.
Note
To use the network device driver only, load the vi rti o , vi rti o_net and vi rti o _pci
modules. To use the block device driver only, load the vi rti o, vi rti o _ri ng , vi rti o _bl k
and vi rti o_pci modules.
Important
The virtio package modifies the initrd RAM disk file in the /bo o t directory. The original initrd
file is saved to /bo o t/i ni trd -kernel-version. i mg . vi rti o . o ri g . The original initrd
file is replaced with a new initrd RAM disk containing the vi rti o driver modules. The initrd
RAM disk is modified to allow the virtual machine to boot from a storage device using the virtio
drivers. To use a different initrd file, you must ensure that drivers are loaded with the sysi ni t
script (Loading the virtio drivers with the sysinit script) or when creating new initrd RAM disk
(Adding the virtio drivers to the initrd RAM disk).
Lo ad in g t h e virt io d rivers wit h t h e sysin it scrip t
This procedure covers loading the virtio driver modules during the boot sequence on a Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 3.9 or newer guest with the sysi ni t script. Note that the guest virtual machine
cannot use the virtio drivers for the default boot disk if the modules are loaded with the sysi ni t
script.
The drivers must be loaded in the following order:
1. vi rti o
2. vi rti o _ri ng
3. vi rti o _pci
4. vi rti o _bl k
5. vi rti o _net
⁠Chapt er 1 0 . KVM Para- virt ualiz ed (virt io) Drivers
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