VM hang: how to get latest sources

VM hang: how to get latest sources

[Ross Boylan]

My VM keeps hanging (high host CPU use, no response except from the
monitor) and I assume the first advice I will get is to use the current
version of qemu/kvm.

Where and what is that?  It seems there is a development and production
release, and things have mostly been folded into qemu.  I'm not sure
what flavor is appropriate.  Some earlier messages on the list referred
to a git repo.

I'm running Debian wheezy amd64 with linux kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 and
qemu-kvm  1.1.2+dfsg-6.  It looks as if the most current version in sid
is qemu-system-x86 (1.6.0+dfsg-1).  If the side version is recent enough
it would probably be a bit easier for me to get going.

I would like to avoid upgrading the kernel if possible.

I am invoking with  -cpu pentium3 -smp 2.  The host processor is
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1245 V2 @ 3.40GHz (4 cores, 8 hyperthreads).

If anyone can help me on my problems with the current version, I would
welcome it.  Here are some more questions.

Do I get hardware virtualization if I specify -cpu pentium3?

Side note: I'm not sure I need the -cpu at all; I am trying to recover a
32 bit OS (Debian Lenny) that ran on a Pentium 4 before it died.  I may
try running without the -cpu argument to see if that helps.

Details of the crashes are at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=724798.  Any ideas
about what's going on?  How can I capture more useful diagnostic
information?

Thanks.
Ross Boylan

Re: VM hang: how to get latest sources

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 02:22:46PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> My VM keeps hanging (high host CPU use, no response except from the
> monitor) and I assume the first advice I will get is to use the current
> version of qemu/kvm.
> 
> Where and what is that?  It seems there is a development and production
> release, and things have mostly been folded into qemu.  I'm not sure
> what flavor is appropriate.  Some earlier messages on the list referred
> to a git repo.
> 
> I'm running Debian wheezy amd64 with linux kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 and
> qemu-kvm  1.1.2+dfsg-6.  It looks as if the most current version in sid
> is qemu-system-x86 (1.6.0+dfsg-1).  If the side version is recent enough
> it would probably be a bit easier for me to get going.
> 
> I would like to avoid upgrading the kernel if possible.
> 
> I am invoking with  -cpu pentium3 -smp 2.  The host processor is
> Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1245 V2 @ 3.40GHz (4 cores, 8 hyperthreads).
> 
> If anyone can help me on my problems with the current version, I would
> welcome it.  Here are some more questions.
> 
> Do I get hardware virtualization if I specify -cpu pentium3?
> 
> Side note: I'm not sure I need the -cpu at all; I am trying to recover a
> 32 bit OS (Debian Lenny) that ran on a Pentium 4 before it died.  I may
> try running without the -cpu argument to see if that helps.
> 
> Details of the crashes are at
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=724798.  Any ideas
> about what's going on?  How can I capture more useful diagnostic
> information?

If you're having trouble capturing console output, use a serial console:

 $ qemu -serial stdio ...

On the GRUB kernel command-line add console=ttyS0.  Then the guest
consoel messages will appear in your terminal on the host.

Stefan