February 2010 - virt - lists.centos.org

How to debug Ubuntu 8.04 LTS guest crash during install?
by Neil Aggarwal 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

Hello: I am using kvm on a CentOS 5.4 server. I am trying to install the TunkeyLinux Core appliance found here: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/core I downloaded the ISO file from the web site. Then, I used this command to intall it: virt-install -n tkl-core -r 512 --vcpus=1 --check-cpu --os-type=linux --os-variant=ubuntuhardy -v --accelerate -c /tmp/turnkey-core-2009.10-hardy-x86.iso -f /var/lib/libvirt/images/tkl-core.img -s 15 -b br0 --vnc noautoconsole When I connect to the VNC console, I get the Turnkey linux options screen. I select Install to hard disk from there and it seems to start the install but crashes during the installer startup. This is repeatable so there has to be a way to debug it. I tried turning on the debug option for virt-install but that did not give me any useful info. Any ideas how to debug this? Thanks, Neil -- Neil Aggarwal, (281)846-8957, http://UnmeteredVPS.net/cpanel cPanel/WHM preinstalled on a virtual server for only $40/month! No overage charges, 7 day free trial, PayPal, Google Checkout

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Re: [CentOS-virt] moving from Xen to KVM
by Christopher G. Stach II 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

----- "Dave Augustus" <davea(a)ingraftedsoftware.com> wrote: > I finally realized that when running Xen and in Dom0, Xen hides the > AMD-V in /proc/cpuinfo Really? dom0: flags : fpu tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc pni monitor cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm cr8_legacy guest: flags : fpu tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc pni monitor cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm cr8_legacy > (...more reasons to move to KVM) I have a hunch that you are going to do whatever you are told to do and that you really have no idea what is going on. Can we get more "Hey, I'm told KVM is cool so I'm migrating all of my production servers to it because the free OS of my choice may not support it in a year or two after I leave my current suckjob position and I hear, since I don't read mainline kernel mailing lists religiously and keep only a superficial idea in my head about kernel development, since I really have no idea what 'kernel development' means, that KVM is the only Jesus-approved way of doing things" threads? None of you seem to have have a head for any of this, it seems. Maybe you're just working for Billy's Interwebs-r-Us and keeping Sally's Nail Shop going strong, but the last time I checked, the "ent" in CentOS stood for "enterprise". Here are a few tips: 1. Fuck KVM. 2. Stick with Xen because there is quite a lot of time until 5 is EOL'd and if you haven't noticed, it's actually a mature technology. 3. Figure out what you are going to do with Sally's Nail Shop in the meantime. If you have time to fuck everything up in your environment with KVM, you can probably save 20% or more optimizing your environment and even more with proper capital investments and training. 4. Figure out how either a) non-critical/enterprise services would ever be served by KVM's features or lack thereof, or b) you are going to CYA when you can't guarantee an SLA. 5. Spend more time on KVM dev lists instead of posting here and annoying others with your butthurt KVM-won't-work posts, as it's not even supported upstream. -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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Fedora 12 2.6.31.5-127.fc12 domU on CentOS 5.4 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5xen fails to boot
by Charles J Gruener 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

Doing a kickstart install of Fedora 12 results in a non-bootable image. >From a virt-maanger instance, the error produced when trying to run the domU is: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/engine.py", line 498, in run_domain vm.startup() File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/domain.py", line 573, in startup self.vm.create() File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 287, in create if ret == -1: raise libvirtError ('virDomainCreate() failed', dom=self) libvirtError: POST operation failed: xend_post: error from xen daemon: (xend.err "Error creating domain: Boot loader didn't return any data!") If you drop to the command line to see what pygrub gets back, you get: # pygrub /var/lib/xen/images/fedora12.img Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pygrub", line 677, in ? fs = fsimage.open(file, get_fs_offset(file)) IOError: [Errno 95] Operation not supported The kickstart worked perfectly in Fedora 11 on a CentOS 5.4 dom0. I've tried investigating all sorts of grub options and even tried copying kernel and initramfs files out from the domU to dom0 and booting from those with no luck. The only thing that does work is if I install Fedora 11 and then perform an upgrade to Fedora 12. I really don't want to have to deploy machines this way. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I can provide any further information requested. Basically, to repeat my error, install CentOS 5.4 with Virtualization, then try to install a Fedora 12 domU. The installation finishes without error but you can't boot. The systems are all x86_64. Thanks. Charles

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Sound and VGA resolution for KVM guests
by carlopmart 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hi all, Recentlly, I have installed a Windows 7 Enterprise kvm guest under a CentOS 5.4 kvm host (fully updated) using virtio drivers and all works ok except two things: sound and vga resolution. a) How can I increase vga resolution to 1440x900 or is not possible to configure more than 1024x768 when virt-manager is used?? b) I have assigned a sound device to this windows guest (ac97) but it doesn't works. Do I need to download this driver from some location?? Under hardware view windows shows me a multimedia device but without driver installed. Thanks. -- CL Martinez carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

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moving from Xen to KVM
by Dave Augustus 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Hello All, I have been building a new server to deploy using Xen. However, seeing that Redhat is moving towards KVM, it would seem beneficial to deply this server using KVM as well. This is a Centos 5.4 x86_64 fresh install. So here is the scoop: * running the xen kernel with 2 vms works great. I have 2 vms- a cobbler host and an ldap host. * running with non-xen kernel, I can't seem to get anything to work right. Using virt-install from the command line, I get the response of "Host does not support any virtualization options" yet I know it does. What am I missing here? I spent some hours last night searching and came up empty. Thanks in advance, Dave

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guest management: 1 and only 1 instance
by Christopher Hunt 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Gang, I run several KVM host machines. Due to updates, maintenance, and unexpected reboots sometime host machines are restarted. I can easily envision a scenario where HostX needs some critical packages updated or is acting up. I migrate guest0, guest1, guest2 etc. from HostX to HostY. Then, in either a planned (i.e. scheduled maintenance) or unplanned (i.e. unplanned reboot) event reboots HostX. Unfortunately guest0, guest1 and guest2 are all set to autostart on HostX but they're currently running on HostY when HostX boots.... etc etc etc Is anyone using effective packages, scripts or techniques which help maintain that all guest are running once and only once across a cluster of KVM hosts? I have been using virt-manager but it's not automated so much... Thanks for your feedback, Chris

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what's wrong with using the qemu monitor with kvm/libvirt?
by Mr. X 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

List, http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvirt-users/2010-January/msg00012.html As in the above post, I wondered why the Qemu Monitor is not available when using kvm with libvirt. With the amount of features that are already exposed in Qemu, it might be easier to run qemu-kvm commands manually/script and forget libvirt in order to not lose this ability. -- Mark

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Mounting LVM contained ntfs systems.
by Christopher G. Stach II 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

----- "Ben M." <centos(a)rivint.com> wrote: > I dd'd the LV from a snapshot to an empty LV on a different VG with > identical extents like this: > > dd if=/dev/vgsnapshotsource/win2k8-snapshot > of=/dev/vgtarget/win2k8-target > > I'm a little confused by what you mean by "partition" and disk in this > context. There is the LV container created, a partition, but also a > volume and presented as a "disk" to the Windows vm. I meant from the perspective of Linux. It is unclear to me how many layers are involved and whether or not you already did the kpartx bit, but if in case you didn't... If Windows is using the LV as an entire disk and partitions it, you have to use that partition table, too. -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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OpenNode (CentOS based) virtualization solution preview released
by Andres Toomsalu 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

Hi, We have released first preview release of OpenNode - http://opennode.activesys.org - an open source server virtualization solution providing easy to use (CentOS based) bare-metal ISO installer and supporting both OpenVZ container-based virtualization and KVM full virtualization technology on the same physical host out-of-the-box. So everybody who wants to use OpenVZ and KVM together on CentOS host this should be appealing. OpenNode main features are: 1) easy to use automated disk partitioning and LVM setup (also creating softraid setup if desired - thou true hardware raid is reccomended for production servers) 2) installs minimum set of packages needed for out-of-the-box openvz and kvm hypervisors support - together with the libvirt (inluding virsh and virt-install CLI utilities) and func (Fedora Unified Network Controller) management interfaces 3) includes stable RHEL5 2.6.18 series kernel provided by OpenVZ project and rebuilded KVM kernel module package for this ovzkernel 4) does automatic bridge networking setup needed for OpenVZ veth (which enables broadcast traffic for container) and KVM networking - you just enter interface configuration data in the installer networking screen and bridge setup is taken care of by the installer 5) includes opennode cli utility which will run at console logon - provides (currently only openvz) templates download (CentOS, Ubuntu, LTSP, OpenVPN, Bind, etc.) and registering OpenNode with central management solution (in development) 6) disables unneeded services - just run only things that are needed by hardware node to provide stable virtualization platform OpenNode installer ISO download is provided through sourceforge.net project page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/opennode Please test the installer and also give us feedback for improving OpenNode. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------------- Andres Toomsalu, andres(a)active.ee

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Moving vmware guests to a CentOS KVM server
by carlopmart 24 Feb '10

24 Feb '10

Hi all, I need to move ten CentOS/RHEL 5.4 vmware guests from a vmware ESXi 4 host to a CentOS 5.4 KVM host (fully patched). But I have two doubts. First: all these guests have two e1000 network drivers defined as a eth0,eth1 and modprobe.conf file is the same on all: alias eth0 e1000 alias eth1 e1000 alias net-pf-10 off options ipv6 disable=1 Can I change e1000 driver to virtio_net driver without problems and then update kernel??? Second doubt: all MAC address are defined with vmware range (00:50:56:XX:XX:XX) and I have configured all with HWADDR option under ifcfg-ethX files. Do I need to change all MAC address to KVM range or can I keep vmware range?? I don't need to convert virtual disks because all these guests are installed on an iSCSI luns under Solaris/ZFS servers ... Many thanks. -- CL Martinez carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

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Boot delay and startup order for KVM guests
by carlopmart 23 Feb '10

23 Feb '10

Hi all, Finally, I have migrated my rhel/centos guests from vmware to kvm server using virtio drivers without problems. But I need to startup these guests using certain order and assign boot delays. How can I do this?? Does kvm provides some type of tool to do it?? Or do I need to create virsh scripts to do it?? I have tried autostart option from libvirt but starts all guests at the same time. Thanks. -- CL Martinez carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

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Dynamically add virtio storage to guests via libvirt and KVM?
by Steven Ellis 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

Is this actually possible with KVM on Centos 5.4? I'd like to be able to grow the storage of a virtualised database server as required. Both the base server and virtual guest are running Centos 5.4 I've tried adding the storage but it doesn't appear until reboot. I can't force a scsi device scan as there are no entries under /sys/class/scsi_* Any ideas? Steve

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Fedora 12 domU will not boot kernel
by Tait Clarridge 21 Feb '10

21 Feb '10

Hello Everyone, I have been trying to get a Fedora 12 domU to boot for the better part of the afternoon and haven't had success booting any F12 kernel in Xen. I can get Fedora 11 installed no problem, tried to do a preupgrade but the when booting the preupgrade kernel through grub (or even from outside the domU) the domU reboots very quickly and ultimately crashes. As far as I saw in the qemu-dm-xxx.log, xend.log, and xend-debug.log there are no messages informing me of what went wrong. I am using CentOS 5.3 with the 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5xen kernel. I am unable to update the kernel at this time as new drivers cause major disk controller issues. If it as simple as a kernel update I will try again, but as of right now I am stumped so I asking for a little help! Has anyone successfully gotten F12 set as a domU using the regular CentOS xen and kernel-xen packages? xen-3.0.3-80.el5_3.3 kernel-xen-2.6.18-92.1.22.el5 Best, Tait

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Mounting LVM contained ntfs systems.
by Ben M. 20 Feb '10

20 Feb '10

Using CentOS 5.4 Xen Virtualization "stock install" Added rpmforge NTFS extension for mount command. Scenario: Have mirror dd'd off to "backup" unmounted LV contained Windows machine. Within the LVM volume are two NTFS partitions formatted by Win2k8. Issue: How can I mount this? I need to verify file existence and run batch of file compare checks. If I try to mount the LV: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [root@vm1 ~]# mount -t ntfs /dev/thisvg00/thisw2kwe-b4change /mnt/ntfs NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/mapper/serv1vg00-w2kwe--b4cert': Invalid argument The device '/dev/mapper/serv1vg00-w2kwe--b4cert' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Would I have had an easier situation if I just had made one big C: partition instead of two (1 for OS and progs, other for data and applications)?

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Which driver interface do I need to install Windows 2008 R2 as a KVM guest?
by carlopmart 17 Feb '10

17 Feb '10

Hi all, With the latest kvm updates, somebody have tried to install windows 2008 R2/windows 7 as a kvm guest using e1000 or virtio net driver?? Works with the windows installer?? Thanks. -- CL Martinez carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

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bridged kvm guest and ever changing MAC address
by Veiko Kukk 16 Feb '10

16 Feb '10

Hi, Centos 5.4, dual igb ethernet, kvm guest (Centos 5.4). br0 is connected to eth0, guest has virtio ethernet connected to br0. Guest is configured using virt-manager. When host is booting, br0 gets mac address of eth0. Every time i start guest (with virt-manager) vnet0 appears and br0 mac aadressi on host is changed. Why does it need to change the mac? I'd like to keep it same, not to change it every time guest is booting. -- Veiko

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Install CentOS boot from iSCSI with Virtualization: could not get boot entry
by Bart Heinsius 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

Hi, I'm installing CentOS 5.4 on an iSCSI disk. When I choose to install the Server component only, the system boots perfectly from the iSCSI disk. When I choose to install the Server and the Virtualization components, it looks like the lvm root partition can't be mounted, I get the message: iscsistart: could not get boot entry Can't the Xen kernel boot from iSCSI? -Bart

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KVM - restart of VMs after rejoin a node into cluster
by Ingmar 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Hi, I have the following problem ... I have a cluster with 2 nodes and use the Vrtualisierung KVM (83-105.el5_4.22) on CentOS 5.4 (x64 - 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5) with drbd 8.3.6. For the cluster, I use the following software tools: - heartbeat (3.0.1) - pacemaker (1.0.7) and - libvirt (0.6.3). If a node has been switched off or he was placed on standby and I activate it again, all VMs will be restarted (reboot) after the 2nd Node is online and active. Is this a known problem? Does anyone know where the bug is? Is there a solution for this? regards

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Enabling KSM with ksmctl under Centos 5.4
by Steven Ellis 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Are their any good guides out there on how to use ksmctl to enable and tune KSM performance on Centos/RedHat At the moment the only guidelines I can find are from the following OLS paper, plus the Linux Kernel Docs. * http://www.kernel.org/doc/ols/2009/ols2009-pages-19-28.pdf * http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt On a basic dual core testbed with 4GB Ram and 4-5 VMs I've tried ksmctl start 60 5000 This resulted in a 5% system cpu load as it tried to recover shared space. Sadly I can't tell how well it is working as we don't have /sys/kernel/mm/ksm support in Centos. Has anyone got some guidelines on how to relate number of pages + interval to number of CPUs and Ram. Cheers Steve -- Bulletin.net <http://www.bulletin.net/> *Steven Ellis - Director of Worldwide Engineering,* *Bulletin.Net Inc* - http://www.bulletin.net/ *Ph* +64 9 307 1146 *Fax* +64 9 307 1148 *Mo* +64 21 321 673

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Re: [CentOS-virt] LTO tape drives and Bacula for Backups?
by Christopher G. Stach II 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

----- "compdoc" <compdoc(a)hotrodpc.com> wrote: > The tape is easily replaceable, without > having to worry about bad connectors that can plague hot > swap drive bay equipment. I really worry about your staff if you have damaged hot swap anything. How many insertions are they rated for? According to its data sheet, a lower end Tyco/AMP SATA connector measures up against EIA-364-09C (i.e., "Mate and unmated [sic] connector assemblies for 500 cycles at a maximum rate of 200 cycles/hour.") Other relevant forces are on there, and you can read the rest if you're interested here: http://tinyurl.com/ybnacp7 Basically, if you break them, you're doing something wrong or you are buying equipment with counterfeit or excessively substandard parts. I wouldn't consider this to be on the scale of a plague. > At $45 per tape for 320G of storage, it competes with hard > drives. In case of tape drive failure, the tapes still work > with the new drive. And with scsi or sata based tape drives, > speed is not a problem. Plus the cost of the tape drive (~$700), plus time, increased risk (longer backup duration means more risk), deployment flexibility, etc etc etc. > Combined with disk based network storage, tapes have a place > in IT. Yes, archival storage. -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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LTO tape drives and Bacula for Backups?
by Lee Doran 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

How does everyone feel about using Quantum LTO 3 and 4 tapes with Bacula for backing up both the VM's, Host, as well as from within the VM's. What are know good backup solutions? Can anyone name specific tape drives / software that is working. Lee

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Best practices for LVM and virtualization
by Mathieu Baudier 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hello, I'm currently setting up a virtualization infrastructure based on CentOS 5.4 x86_64 and KVM. I want to use LVM because of its flexibility, especially the ability to add more disk space to a guest if needed. We are considering using an hardware RAID1 with BBU as the lowest layer. My question is: where is it recommended to put the LVM? 1. On the host only In that case, the guests would see logical volumes as hard drives and would be installed with "plain" partitions (ext3 / swap) When more space is needed the logical volume (from host perspective) / drive (from guest perspective) would simply become bigger. This feels simple, but I wonder whether there may be side effects, since real harddrive cannot grow, and maybe some parts of the system expect them to stay of a given size. 2. On the guest only On the host, there would only be "plain" raw partitions, which the guest would see as hard drives. The guest would be installed with an LVM and when more space is needed, an additional partition (from host perspective) / drive (from guest perspective) would be added to the guest volume group, which would then become bigger, allowing logical volumes to grow. I'm not too comfortable with that, since my understanding of the role of the host is to manage resources for the guests: memory, CPUs so I'd like to have some powerful abstraction there for disk space as well, which is one purpose of LVM. The guest would then need to be restarted when space is added. 3. On both host and guest LVM would be installed on the host, which would then provide the logical volumes as hard drives for the guest. The guest would use them as additional drives to be added to its own volume group when it needs to grow. This feels the most flexible, but I wonder whether it is not wrong to add LVM layers upon LVM layers, from a performance/stability/simplicity perspective. The guest would probably have to be restarted when more space is needed (I've not tested this extensively yet) I would be very interested to have your opinion / experience about this before I go further in my testing! Cheers, Mathieu

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Can I use direct attached storage as a shared filesystem in Xen
by Christopher G. Stach II 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

----- "Rich" <rhdyes(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I am doing rsync now. What is the difference between ocf2 and gfs? There are comparisons on the web, but in short, cluster size, GFS can be a major pain in the ass for some people to set up (fencing support is usually said pain), and GFS has distribution support. For such a small installation, you are probably better off with OCFS2. If you need something that is almost exactly the same as a local filesystem and depend upon certain filesystem behaviors for whatever reason (locking comes to mind), you will be better off with GFS. -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Can I use direct attached storage as a shared filesystem in Xen
by Christopher G. Stach II 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

----- "Rich" <rhdyes(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I think the better question is this. How can I make my 2 physical > servers that are identical into the best clustered solution sharing > the storage between the 2. Do you want the storage to be redundant between the two like RAID 1 or just all of it accessible to any guest on either machine like a JBOD? For either, you can use a suitable mix of drbd, iSCSI, GNBD, LVM, heartbeat, keepalived, and a clustered filesystem. If you do the latter, remember that this squares your risk. If you want a simple A/B failover setup where the second physical host is idle until the first physical host fails, you can just use drbd and heartbeat or RHCS. > They all use xfs. > I want to keep the guests the same on each server. > I will start with the backup server. I will go on each vm and delete > this FS and block device. > I then want make that whole 10 terabyte raid into one gfs and then > re-attach it back to each guest. > Is that possible or do I have to start all over again? If it can be > done I then will sync the date from the mainserver to this backup > server and then switch them and do the same to the mainserver. That sounds about right. You need to make your backups (!), destroy the data on of your servers by creating the new clustered filesystem, copy the data from the other server, and then share it with your reconfigured guests. So, basically what you said. > I have one more question which is another whole thread. > I am using rsync to sync the 2 physical boxes now. Is there a better > way to do this? drbd, but rsync does a pretty good job in a lot of use cases. I wouldn't say that it fits this one, though. -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Can I use direct attached storage as a shared filesystem in Xen
by Christopher G. Stach II 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

----- "Adam Adamou" <adam0x54(a)gmail.com> wrote: > either nfs or ocfs2. nfs is the easiest route. ocfs2 will give you a > clustered filesystem. Except NFS doesn't follow normal filesystem semantics and you can end up with corrupt data without knowing it, and it, along with CIFS, will give you a free shitload of network overhead to go along with your possibly corrupt data. OCFS2 or GFS are the only practical choices if you want it to behave like a typical filesystem and not have to worry about catering to it or rewriting software and/or reeducating developers, and OCFS2 is extremely easy to set up. The original question didn't specify much about the requirements, though. A single shared filesystem? Read-write or read-only? No filesystem at all? Without that information, I would at first recommend not sharing. It can be a lot of trouble, it's usually not required, and it severely complicates life when things fail. Well, there is always XenFS... :/ -- Christopher G. Stach II http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

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virt February 2010