I’m guessing the hardware has virtual abilities enabled in the bios…

This problem you have once happened to me, and from what I can remember it had something to do with storage. These days I use block devices, which is faster. If you’re using file-based, I guess you might want to check permissions for the directory you’re putting them in, as well as permissions for the .iso file you’re installing from.

Also, make sure you are not running the zen kernel – KVM requires the normal x86_64 kernel.  Using the package manager to list my kvm components:

etherboot-zroms-kvm.x86_64   5.4.4-10.el5.centos          installed

kmod-kvm.x86_64                          83-105.el5_4.28                installed

kvm.x86_64                                        83-105.el5_4.28                installed

kvm-qemu-img.x86_64                 83-105.el5_4.28                installed

uname -a:  Linux centos.domain.com 2.6.18-164.15.1.el5 #1 SMP Wed Mar 17 11:30:06 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

From: centos-virt-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-virt-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of gibbe gabba
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 1:06 AM
To: Discussion about the virtualization on CentOS
Subject: Re: [CentOS-virt] KVM: 'ÿ' character after starting a VM via virt-install

The hardware is DELL PowerEdge R210 Quad Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3430  @ 2.40GHz (/proc/cpuinfo).

I installed KVM with .RPMs after installing the system with a base Centos 5.4 installation (server).
yum install kvm
yum install virt-install

the kvm and kvm_intel modules are loaded. Also HyperThreading is available (enabled in BIOS), so KVM isn't complaining about that.

I've tried following Linux distros:

- Centos 5.4
- Fedora 12
- Ubuntu 10
- Sipcat 1.3

All of them have the same problem. I tried both installing from a CD ISO and from http repositories.

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 4:53 PM, compdoc <compdoc@hotrodpc.com> wrote:

Just curious as to what hardware you're running it on. And when you say you've installed the necessary rpms, does this mean you installed KVM by hand after the install, or through the installer when you first installed it?

From: centos-virt-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-virt-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of gibbe gabba
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 7:02 AM
To: centos-virt@centos.org
Subject: [CentOS-virt] KVM: 'ÿ' character after starting a VM via virt-install

I'm unable to start a virtual machine with KVM.

I'm using Centos 5.4

I have installed all necessary rpms (to my knowledge), but as you can see from the output (below), the system does not boot the CD-ROM. It just sits there doing nothing:

# virt-install --prompt




Would you like to use KVM acceleration? (yes or no) yes




 What is the name of your virtual machine? test









 How much RAM should be allocated (in megabytes)? 1024









 What would you like to use as the disk (file path)? /var/lib/libvirt/images/test.img




 How large would you like the disk (/var/lib/libvirt/images/test.img) to be (in gigabytes)? 20









 What is the install CD-ROM/ISO or URL? /root/CentOS-5.4-i386-bin-1of6.iso



















Starting install...




Creating storage file...                                          |  20 GB     00:00




Creating domain...                                                |    0 B     00:00









Connected to domain test









Escape character is ^]




ÿ

the 'ÿ' character appears after a few seconds, then nothing... Error! Filename not specified.

Any help is appreciated!

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