Re: VirtIO and BSOD On Windows Server 2003

[Vadim Rozenfeld <vrozenfe@redhat.com>]

Well, that's really something new for me.
Our most recent official build was build-49,
all viostor drivers have passed WHQL, functional, 
autotest and performance tests on rhel6.4. 
More recent builds are targeted at rhel6.5
and some of them can be broken. I don't know how
virtio-win package has been structures on 
fedoraproject site, but our recommendation was
to keep at least two releases available - one
for the latest stable drivers (the same binaries 
we ship to our customers, but not MS signed), and
one is the latest build - mostly for preview and/or
quick fix engineering. Pleas try downgrading to build 49.
I don't know whether we trace CentOS virtio-win bugs 
bugzilla but we definitely maintain virtio-win
bugs in Fedora.
I will try to take a look into the problem during the week.

Best regards,
Vadim. 
  

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Clausen" <mightymartianca@gmail.com>
To: "Vadim Rozenfeld" <vrozenfe@redhat.com>
Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 2:20:45 AM
Subject: Re: VirtIO and BSOD On Windows Server 2003

On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Vadim Rozenfeld <vrozenfe@redhat.com> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Aaron Clausen" <mightymartianca@gmail.com>
> To: "Vadim Rozenfeld" <vrozenfe@redhat.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2013 12:45:14 AM
> Subject: Re: VirtIO and BSOD On Windows Server 2003
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Vadim Rozenfeld <vrozenfe@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Aaron Clausen" <mightymartianca@gmail.com>
>> To: "Vadim Rozenfeld" <vrozenfe@redhat.com>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:05:03 AM
>> Subject: Re: VirtIO and BSOD On Windows Server 2003
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Vadim Rozenfeld <vrozenfe@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, we have it WHQL certified as a SCSI adapter for all OS'es ,
>>> except for XP, and it should be available as a part of virtio-win
>>> package from fedoraproject site.
>>> --
>>
>> Okay, some further information. The stop code was 0x0000007f, with the
>> parameter 0x0000000d;  UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP
>>
>> Do you have any other VM, like Win7/W2K8, to check with?
>
> No, unfortunately. I do have a Server 2012 install (just working as a
> domain controller/authenticator at the moment), so I know the x64
> virtio drivers have no problem. I'm pretty sure this isn't a problem
> with the driver itself. Doing some googling reveals that there are
> some problems with some x86 guests, and it's probable that Debian has
> run with a kernel that doesn't possess the appropriate patches (not
> for the first time), and unless I want to go to testing (not what I
> would consider a good idea on a production machine), I'll be stuck
> with IDE.
>
>
> the difference between WS2K3 and WS2012 is that the first one is only
> working in IRQ mode, while more modern OS'es operate in MSI interrupt mode.
> I would start with checking bios version, maybe it worse to download
> the recent Seabios and build it by yourself.
>
>
>>
>> I'm building the new server and maybe I'll throw CentOS or Fedora on
>> it. I'm more a Debian fan myself, but while these guests are running,
>> ide emulation is slow.
>>
>> Yes, according to our performance team the recent viostor driver was
>> 2..6 times faster than IDE, depending on load scenario.
>> Vadim.
>
> That didn't make me feel better :)
>
> I'm going to try out Fedora today. If the Windows guests work in it,
> then I'll move to the platform. I like Debian, but running under IDE,
> particularly for the MS-Exchange server, is just not pleasant.

Okay. I set up a CentOS 6.4 x64. Fired up a Windows Server 2003 x64
guest and the second I installed the virtio drivers, I got a BSOD with
0x00000007e (a different error, yes, but won't boot until I yank the
viostor.sys file).

This is on completely different hardware and it's a qcow2 rather than
a raw image, so at this point I have to believe that there is
something very broken in the virtio drivers. I'm thinking at this time
because I need these guests running in a production environment that
I'm going to go back to an earlier Debian release. I' m pretty
disappointed here. KVM has been rock solid for me for two years, and
this is the first trouble I've had.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightymartianca@gmail.com