This is the first Fedora virt status report in a month now, and it's been a heck of busy month! - The F11 feature/beta freeze - Scrambling to complete the F11 virt features - Legendary work getting the qemu/kvm package merge in shape - A re-designed virt-manager UI - Various upstream releases - Progress on Xen Dom0 - A massive amount of bugzilla activity We're not there yet, though. The final important item on the F11 schedule is: 2009-04-14 Final freeze (20 days) There's a huge pile of bug-fixing and polish work to do in that time. If you're looking to help out, there's no better place to start than the F11VirtBlocker/F11VirtTarget tracker bugs: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F11VirtBlocker&... https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F11VirtTarget&h... Fedora 11 Beta ============== The Beta was due to be released at this point, but a 7 day slip was announced last week: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-March/msg01163.html Jesse isn't pointing fingers, but I am ... it's anaconda's fault :-) It looks like today's rawhide may be the final Beta compose, as the blocker list is looking much healthier: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F11Beta&hide_re... Fedora Weekly News ================== With so much going on in the Fedora Virtualization space in the last number of weeks, it's great to see Dale Bewley continuing to contribute excellent virt sections to FWN: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue168#Virtualization https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue167#Virtualization https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue166#Virtualization https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue165#Virtualization F11 Virt Features ================= Chris Lalance summarised a recent FECSo meeting where four virt features were discussed: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00097.html The upshot is that the Shared Network Interface is postponed until Fedora 12. Also, the KVM and QEMU Merge feature fell off the radar briefly, but will hopefully be approved as an exception by FESCo this week. So, the final list of F11 virt features is: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:F11_Virt_Features * KVM PCI Device Assignment * KVM and QEMU merge * SVirt Mandatory Access Control * VirtImprovedConsole * VirtVNCAuth Planning for Fedora 12 has already begun, and the current set of features proposed is: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:F12_Virt_Features * Shared Network Interface * VirtStorageManagement * XenPvopsDom0 KVM PCI Device Assignment ========================= This feature is now complete for F11: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment Just in time for feature freeze, the libvirt node device attach, re-attach and reset APIs were added (in 0.6.1). Cole also added the --host-device parameter to virt-install and host device support to virt-manager. Also, /sys/bus/pci/devices/pci-stub/remove_id (used by libvirt) was recently backported from 2.6.30 to rawhide: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487103 http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-kernel-list/2009-March/msg00021.html KVM and QEMU Merge ================== Glauber continued his awesome work on merging the qemu and kvm packages. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_and_QEMU_merge -- QEMU 0.10 -- Upstream QEMU did a 0.10.0 release, followed closely by a 0.10.1 release: http://www.archivum.info/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/2009-03/msg00188.html http://www.archivum.info/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/2009-03/msg01067.html This release will form the basis of the Fedora 11 version of QEMU. However, in order for that to happen, the KVM upstream maintainers need to release a version of kvm-userspace which is based on the qemu-0.10.x series. This is planned in the near future. In the meantime, rawhide will ship snapshots of latest kvm-userspace.git. QEMU upstream plan to do regular releases every three months. There will also be releases from the current stable branch (e.g. 0.10.x for now) as needed. This is great news for Fedora, as it means we can track QEMU development in Fedora while still being able to keep QEMU stable in Fedora releases. -- BIOS Packages -- Work continued on the gnarly issue of build BIOS images for QEMU. The vgabios and openbios packages were approved: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/485418 Review Request: vgabios - vga option rom for bochs/qemu https://bugzilla.redhat.com/485420 Review Request: openbios - Open Source implementation of IEEE 1275-1994 Also, the bochs-bios package was approved, but with koji's ability to build noarch sub-packages, it was no longer needed: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/485417 Review Request: bochs-bios - bios implementation from the bochs project Later, it was realized that a KVM specific version of bochs was needed, so Glauber added that to the bochs package: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/488759 Cannot run F10/F11 i386 guests without disabling ACPI https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490203 doesn't boot RHEL 5 kernel -- The Merge -- Glauber committed his merged package to rawhide and various folks jumped in helping with testing and cleaning up various packaging issues: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/488418 kvm : Conflicts with other packages https://bugzilla.redhat.com/488249 /usr/bin/qemu-nbd: conflict with qemu-common-1.0-0.4.svn6666.fc11.x86_64 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489432 problems with qemu scripts https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490190 bochs-bios >= 2.3.8-0.5 is needed by qemu-system-x86-2:0.10-0.9.kvm20090310git.fc11.x86_64 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/488350 New qemu package breaks kvm virtualization https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489750 qemu missing some files for kvm support https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489710 qemu-kvm has wrong directory for keymaps The version included in the F11 Beta release seems in really good shape considering how significant a change this was. -- GCC Bug -- Another issue that arose was that latest gcc is breaking plain QEMU. A patch has been proposed upstream, but it's not in rawhide yet: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490512 segfault in stw_kernel when qemu is run https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490509 GCC register allocation wrongly using ebp sVirt ===== The sVirt patch set was added to libvirt-0.6.1 and is in the Fedora 11 Beta release: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SVirt_Mandatory_Access_Control Some issues remain, but things are looking in pretty good shape, all things considered. Some of the related issues include: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491052 selinux: virt-manager downloaded kernel/initrd cannot be accessed by KVM guest Nasty issue where, because virt-manager no longer runs as root, kernel and initrd images are readable by qemu because of their SELinux label. Dan Walsh committed some policy changes to fix this, but virt-manager will need to call restorecon on downloaded images. Dan also suggested a patch from virt-manager using this interesting bit of SELinux functionality: $> python '/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/virtual_image_context' $> cat /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/virtual_image_context system_u:object_r:virt_image_t:s0 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491245 SELinux prevented qemu-kvm from reading an LVM logical volume https://bugzilla.redhat.com/474182 LVs created in an existing VG have wrong SELinux label Issues around the appropriate labelling of logical volumes used for guest installs. Should work better in rawhide. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491176 Sound card breaks new and existing vm's A pulseaudio error caused by sVirt restrictions on guests was causing VMs with sound hardware to fail to start. Fixed in libvirt by disabling sound hardware if sVirt is enabled. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/484555 AVC denied errors when starting KVM guest Another issue cropped up with the selinux changes for libvirt 0.6.0. Fix is in F10 now. Improved Graphical Console ========================== Dan Berrange added a feature page describing the changes made to have the graphical console be 1024x768 by default and use a USB tablet in absolute mode rather than a PS2 mouse. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtImprovedConsole The relevant bugs for each of the improvements are listed on the wiki page. These changes will make a huge difference to the user experience with Fedora virtualization tools. No longer a crappy screen resolution and no longer schizophrenic mouse behaviour. One related problem that Dan had to fix was a particularly nasty 'invisible wall' bug in gtk-vnc to do with pointer grabs and relative mode: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/454938 Cursor Movement is Constrained A particularly nasty 'invisible wall' bug in gtk-vnc to do with pointer grabs and relative mode. VNC Authentication ================== Dan Berrange got his VNC SASL authentication patches for QEMU and backported them to rawhide. Testing is welcome for this feature, but you'll need to bug Dan about filling in the "How To Test" section of the feature page first :-) https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtVNCAuth One problem which has just become apparent is that, in rawhide currently, we are shipping a snapshot of kvm-userspace.git which includes the SASL patches. However, when upstream KVM release a version of kvm-userspace based on qemu-0.10.x, that will not include the SASL patches. This means the patches will have to be backported again. Three cheers for confusion! New virtinst and virt-manager Releases ====================================== Cole released a new version of virtinst: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-March/msg00002.html This release includes: - New virt-clone option --original-xml, allows cloning a guest from an xml file, rather than require an existing, defined guest. - New virt-install option --import, allows creating a guest from an existing disk image, bypassing any OS install phase. - New virt-install option --host-device, for connecting a physical host device to the guest. - Allow specifying 'cache' value via virt-install's --disk options (Ben Kochie) - New virt-install option --nonetworks (John Levon) - Lots of backend cleanups and documentation improvements. and also a new virt-manager release: http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-March/msg00058.html This release includes: - Redesigned 'New Virtual Machine' wizard (Jeremy Perry, Tim Allen, Cole Robinson) - Option to remove storage when deleting a virtual machine. - File browser for libvirt storage pools and volumes, for use when attaching storage to a new or existing guest. - Physical device assignment (PCI, USB) for existing virtual machines. - Bug fixes and minor improvements. Both releases resolve many Fedora bugs and add new and interesting features, but by far the most user-visible change is the re-designed 'New Virtual Machine' wizard. More details Cole's blog: http://blog.wikichoon.com/2009/02/virt-manager-in-fedora-11-new-vm-wizard... I think everyone will agree that this is a huge improvement. I particularily like the "detect distro" feature where we now make every effort to try and figure out what OS is being installed rather than require the user to tell us. libvirt ======= libvirt-0.6.1 was released: http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-March/msg00144.html + New features: - new APIs for Node device detach reattach and reset (Mark McLoughlin) - sVirt mandatory access control support (James Morris and Dan Walsh) ... This is available in rawhide, the F11 Beta and F10 updates-testing. Note, however, that rawhide and F11Beta has quite a number of fixes not yet in updates-testing. Tricky Time Troubles ==================== Hans De Goede tracked down a nasty problem with anaconda running under KVM: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=491529 Unable to mount filesystem: device /dev/sda1 does not exist The problem turned out to be that anaconda was sleeping for a single second to give the kernel time to reload the partition table after committing changes to a disk. However, one cannot predict predict how many CPU cycles a virtual machine will execute in a fixed about of real time. If the host or other guests are busy, then the guest may be starved of CPU for a time. In this case, the kernel was sometimes not getting enough CPU cycles in the time that anaconda was sleeping and so the partition table wasn't reloaded. The fix was to use udev_settle so that we could know for certain when the devices nodes were visible. Xen Dom0 ======== Michael Young continued posting more Dom0 kernel builds. Gerd has helped out by builing new versions of the xen userspace package to work with these kernels. Upstream recently saw some lively debate on whether the patches should be include at all: http://lwn.net/Articles/321696/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.xen.devel/62079 It's hard to predict these things, but it seems likely the patches will end up being accepted. Pasi Kärkkäinen has spent a good deal of time working through various issues with getting a Dom0 install working. One problem identified is that /sys/hypervisor was missing upstream prompting Jeremy Fitzhardinge added a patch to enable that. Pasi also filed some bugs arising from his testing: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489799 libvirt "missing source" error message overwritten by "failed to build sexpr" error Basically, libvirt is giving a useless error message when the bridge name for a given network can't be found. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=491766 libvirtd fails to start if pid file exists but init script still says it started OK libvirt's handling of its PID file isn't quite correct; nasty little issue. Pasi later reported further success: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-March/msg00065.html Today I was able to run the following on Fedora 10 32bit PAE pv_ops dom0: - CentOS 5.3 32bit PAE PV domU - Fedora 10 32bit PAE PV domU - Use virt-install to install Fedora 10 32bit PAE PV domU Bugs ==== DOOM-O-METER: 192 one month ago, 185 now. Not bad! The summary of bugzilla activity is seriously long, so I'll try and categorize things a little: -- Installer -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/470905 anaconda installs the wrong kernel for i686 xen guests danpb confirms this is now fixed because anaconda will always install PAE kernels on systems which support it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491112 QEMU disks show up in anaconda as UNKNOWN Parted needed some smarts to return an appropriate model string for virtio disks. Joel Granados came up with a patch to look in /proc/devices for "virtblk". https://bugzilla.redhat.com/492082 anaconda "unitialized drive" warning is a little too terrifying When virtinst creates a blank disk, anaconda throws up a slightly terrifying warning - "YOU WILL LOSE ALL DATA". We should be able to make the user experience a tad better here. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491132 installation of guest fails with encryption Looks like yet another anaconda storage-rewrite bug. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/484721 Anaconda eats CPU A report that anaconda was stuck in a loop in KVM. Turned out to be a simple "poll() on invalid fd" bug in anaconda itself. -- QEMU -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/492075 qemu package missing debuginfo for qemu-img Glauber has a fix which he submitted upstream. Turns out the upstream makefile was using "install -s", causing the binary to be stripped before find-debuginfo got to it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491943 qemu-img crashes creating 5TB qcow2 file https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491981 Integer wraparound creating a large disk image in VPC format Dan Berrange reports some issues with qemu's handling of very large disks. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/454251 kvm: Build qemu with $RPM_OPT_FLAGS Glauber nicely fixed this long-standing issue. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/457979 Update QEMU to use gPXE roms for iSCSI boot support https://bugzilla.redhat.com/492181 Review Request: gpxe - A network boot loader Discussion around moving to gPXE option ROMs instead of etherboot so as to get iSCSI initiator support during PXE boot. The blocking issue here is modifying QEMU to allow more space for the large gPXE ROM images. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/484364 block-rw-range-check.patch breaks qcow2 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/485148 "Cannot open disk image" when using qcow1 Our only significant not-upstream qemu patch has finally been merged (and fixed) upstream. Yay! https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491582 Fedora11 qemu-kvm installation using qcow2 is not recognizing the hard drive Another bug filed by IBM folks testing the alpha. Almost certainly the same as the qcow2 issue caused by block-rw-range-check.patch. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489804 no working networking in guests with qemu-kvm A transient networking issue reported by Jeremy Katz. Seems to have gone away of its own accord. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491381 Can't use AES encryption in qcow2 F10 qemu seems to lock up with encrypted qcow2 disks before asking for the password. It works fine in rawhide - so long as you think of switching to the qemu monitor with Ctrl-Alt-2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487118 Need to add subsystem vendor ID for kvm/qemu cirrus card https://bugzilla.redhat.com/251264 xorg should use 1024x768 for kvm/qemu cirrus card Now with an F11 host and an F11 guest, xorg's cirrus driver will default to 1024x768 instead of 800x600. Woo! https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487720 qemu-kvm segfaults on startup in SDL_memcpyMMX/SSE Eduardo tracked down and fixed this nasty crasher in libSDL. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/469859 F10 kvm: network stall with qemu rtl8139 NIC emulation People continue to have issues with using RHEL5 and QEMU's rtl8139 emulation. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/478976 qemu-kvm not working with evdev giving wrong key mappings Finally fixed, it seems. Not clear on the details. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/481619 Adding ac97-module (from qemu-repo) ac97 emulation is enabled by default since kvm-84. -- KVM -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/475598 recent fedora guests in KVM are unstable with kvm-clock and !constant_tsc This was fixed a while back by an F10 kernel update, but there was some confusion. It sounds like some people may be experiencing other KVM hangs which are unrelated to this issue. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490479 error when hot-unplugging a file-backed virtio disk Device 'virtio2' does not have a release() function, it is broken and must be fixed. Reported against F10, but has since been fixed upstream/rawhide. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490266 Network transfer from qemu guest machine stalls A reported of a virtio_net related hang. May be similar to one that was reported on kvm@vger previously. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491625 Unable to run RHEL-5 Xen within KVM guest Dan Berrange reports that F11 has regressed in its ability to be able to run the Xen hypervisor inside a guest. It looks to be related to KVM's in-kernel IOAPIC emulation. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491631 Fedora11 Kernel BUG while installing kvm guest os using qcow2 Some IBM folks testing the F11 Alpha hit this oops during installs. We had previously come to the conclusion that this was caused by the pvmmu bug reported in #480822. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/483648 kvm: Oops while installing rawhide/x86_64 guest on F-10/x86_64 host (__shrink_dcache_sb() https://bugzilla.redhat.com/455097 2.6.26-0.124.rc9.git5.fc10.x86_64 oops in new_slab in kvm guest More dups of the the pvmmu issue that Marcelo previously fixed (rh #480822) https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487444 windows server 2003 x64 guest does not poweroff https://bugzilla.redhat.com/484166 QEmu uses 100% of two assigned cores for XP guest clalance reports that this issue seems fixed in F11. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/436881 qemu-kvm: samba/smb causes "bad page state" and/or freeze F9 vintage KVM oops that seems to have gone away in F11. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/437028 KVM: Intel/VMX: host kernel should support DEBUGCTLMSR=0x1d9 KVM does not emulate last-branch-recording which causes PTRACE_SINGLEBLOCK. Looks like the option is either to implement LBR virtualization or have the guest kernel detect that it is running on KVM and that the MSR isn't supported. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/476521 Coredump on start when no kvm modules is loaded Looks like a bug which was fixed in kvm-80. -- libvirt -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491913 adding a new cd-rom device to a KVM guest fails in libvirt Looks like a bug with cd-rom hotplug in libvirt. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/477955 Sound under KVM requires exclusive access to the sound device Dan Berrange explains why sound has essentially been disabled for now in KVM guests. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490191 Ownership of serial console allow only root access If you configure a serial console for a kvm guest in libvirt, the console is only accessible by root ... even if it was a user other than root that started it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489946 libvirt does not do safe replacement of guest/storage pool/network config files When libvirt writes configuration files to disk, it does not use the recommended write-to-tmpfile/flush/sync/close/rename method to ensure data safety. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/484552 libnuma: Warning: /sys not mounted or no numa system. Assuming one node: No such file or directory This annoying warning which I thought had long ago been removed had only been removed on F10, not rawhide. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489481 Useless "domain didn't show up" error when starting a guest with too much RAM It seems that if you assign too much RAM to a QEMU guest, libvirt gives a very unhelpful error message. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/444047 F9 iozone w/ direct I/O performing higher than the raw device Resolved by the option to set the disk caching mode in libvirt. -- virt tools -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/489885 virt-manager (libvirt?) 0.6.1 fails to manage RHEL-5.3 machines virt-manager was failing to properly handle old-style <console/> when remotely connecting to a RHEL5 Xen host. Fix in the latest version of virt-manager. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491755 virt-viewer jumps workspaces on guest restart with virt-install Because virt-viewer is run multiple times by virt-install, it can mean that the window moves unexpectedly between workspaces. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/491683 virt-viewer no longer auto adjusts to guest screen size Sounds like we have a screen resizing issue during installs with rawhide virt-manager/virt-viewer. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490466 virt-manager displays incorrect number of vcpus Strange virt-manager bug artificially limiting the number of vcpus allowed. May turn out to be a gtk bug? https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490207 Wrong Ok/Cancel button order in virt-manager cd-rom connect dialog Another minor virt-manager bug; easy fix. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/488878 GConf error when starting virt-manager-0.6.1-1.fc10 after "su" (works with "su -") A weird virt-manager startup failure turns out to be a known bug with GConf. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=489344 ConsoleKit doesn't know about vncserver sessions Because virt-manager now uses PolicyKit instead of console helper, and because ConsoleKit doesn't see vncserver sessions, virt-manager only opens read-only libvirt connections when running under vncserver. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487190 virt-manager has hardcoded Requires: PolicyKit-gnome Cole fixed in rawhide to require PolicyKit-authentication-agent. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487735 virt-manager/virtinst should not set a keymap unless one is explicitly requested Sounds like keyboard mappings will work correctly because of gtk-vnc scancode extension, so long as virtinst doesn't explicitly set a keymap. -- Xen -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/487324 kernel/lockdep.c warning in xen guest boot dmesg Fixed upstream in 2.6.29-rc6-git5 -- Misc -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/479760 grub-install doesn't support virtio_blk devices What looks like a simple patch to grub-install to make it recognise /dev/vd*