[CentOS-virt] SOLVED! Xen HVM domU won't start since updates to 2.6.18-164.15.1 kernels

Mon Apr 12 02:43:21 UTC 2010
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net>

On 03/31/2010 11:50 PM, Aaron Clark wrote:
>
> I'm going to tinker with this for a bit to try and figure out what
> difference from the previous config is actually the cause of the issue.
> I just had the other, formerly working VM, bail with the same symptoms
> once I got this one work. The workaround is nice but I definitely want
> to isolate this bug now.
>

I just wanted to follow up on this a bit. Once I got it going, the VM 
ran for over 10 days without issues.  Tonight I started tinkering with 
the Xen config to try an isolate whether it was acpi or apic causing 
troubles.... the short answer is that neither is the problem.

What is the problem then?  It looks like a bug in virsh/libvirt; I'll 
need some help to debug it though.  I'm using the following file for all 
of this:
name = "Belldandy"
uuid = "b1f1d0a4-9687-947c-5eaf-b362d5d5a199"
maxmem = 256
memory = 256
vcpus = 1
builder = "hvm"
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
boot = "c"
pae = 1
acpi = 1
apic = 1
on_poweroff = "destroy"
on_reboot = "restart"
on_crash = "restart"
device_model = "/usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm"
disk = [ "phy:/dev/SystemsVG/Belldandy,hda,w" ]
vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:29:65:46,bridge=xenbr0,script=vif-bridge" ]
vnc = 1


1. xm create -f ./Belldandy.xen  -- successfully starts as expected
2. Copy Belldandy.xen to /etc/xen/Belldandy, start with xm create 
Belldandy -- successfully starts as expected
3. Attempt to start with virsh start Belldandy -- fails horribly with 
the same 'no state' issue as before.

So I can work around this for now by not using virsh to start them up 
but it's still quite annoying.  I should note that I can remotely access 
that machine with VMM and it suffers the same issues but handles 
everything else just fine once I manually start the domU via xm as above.

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician