Re: OSSTest -- debian-hvm-install, how to see the progress of guest auto installation

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>]

On Fri, 2015-07-31 at 07:20 +0000, Hu, Robert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> During the hvm guest auto installation, how can I inspect its progress?

It's serial console is logged to the qemu-dm log, something like
/var/log/xen/qemu-dm-$guestname.log I think.

> Currently I encountered some problems during hvm auto-installation; 
> after waited long time, several minutes, I vnc to it, it is black screen.

Right, I think that's expected because the installer is running on the
serial console now.

Currently the qemu-dm log is a mess of ANSI escape codes. If you "cat
/var/log/..." then your terminal will decode it and show the last thing on
the screen (hopefully an error dialog).

My series "fixes to ts-debian-hvm-install" posted to xen-devel on Monday
incorporates a switch to using DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text which produces a more
useful text log from the installer (the same as is used for host kernel
today).

> 
> I'm using debian 7.2 for guest installation. And I saw Ian C. 's patch
> commit c60b6d20b0fd29836a224fdaf9f0d06272144b46
> Author: Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
> Date:   Mon Jul 6 14:45:12 2015 +0100
> 
>     ts-debian-hvm-install: Arrange for installed guest to use a serial 
> console
>     
>     So that the guest boot will be logged somewhere useful (the qemu-dm
>     log).
>     
>     It still seems to pickup a "quiet" from somewhere, so it's not as
>     useful as it might be, but it is an improvement.
> 
> debian 7.2 shall using kernel < 3.15,

Debian 7 (and all point releases) is using a 3.2 kernel.

>  not sure if this commit causes the problem I'm meeting.

This commit will have changed where the guest console log will go but I
don't expect it to have caused whatever the underlying problem you are
seeing is.

Ian.