gokvm is a hypervisor that uses KVM as an acceleration. It is implemented completely in the Go language and has no dependencies other than the standard library. With only 1.5k lines of code, it can boot Linux 5.10, the latest version at the time, without any modifications. It includes a naive and simple device emulation for serial consoles, but does not support networking, disks, etc. The execution environment is limited to the x86-64 Linux environment. This should be useful for those who are interested in how to use KVM from userland.

This is an experimental project, so please do not use it in production.

Extract the latest release from the Github Release tab and run it. Before running, make sure /dev/kvm exists. You can use existing bzImage and initrd, or you can create them using the Makefile of this project.

tar zxvf gokvm*.tar.gz
./gokvm -k ./bzImage -i ./initrd  # To exit, press Ctrl-a x.

This project includes a thin wrapper for the KVM API using ioctl. Please refer to the following link to use it.

https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/bobuhiro11/gokvm

Thanks to the many useful resources on KVM, this project was able to boot Linux on a virtual machine.

• Using the KVM API, lwn.net
• kvmtest.c, lwn.net
• KVM tool
• kvm-hello-world
• aghosn/kvm.go
• KVM HOST IN A FEW LINES OF CODE
• zserge/kvm-host.c
• CS 695: Virtualization and Cloud Computing, cse.iitb.ac.in
• The Linux/x86 Boot Protocol, kernel.org
• Build and run minimal Linux / Busybox systems in Qemu
• kvm_cost.go, google/gvisor
• Serial UART information, www.lammertbies.nl