win2003 guest stutters

win2003 guest stutters

[Joris]

Hi,


Please CC me, I'm not a subscriber to the list.

I have a Debian unstable 64bit host on an intel S3000 quad core xeon
X3210. Kernel 2.6.22-2-amd64 (debian flavour) and KVM28 and KVM36.

Linux guests run very well.


I installed Win2003 EE SP2 with --no-kvm, and disabled ACPI in the
windows setup.
Now I'm running this image with kvm -no-acpi -m 1024 -hda
w2k3image.qcow2 -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap3.
(note I have KVM enabled at this point)

This image works well half of the time (very responsive and no
interruptions), but after some time it will completely freeze for a
period of time (sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes it would seem).
Both the network and the console are completely unresponsive.

I can't see a pattern as to when it happens: sometimes the guest will
work for 10 minutes without a hitch, sometimes I can't make it past
the login screen.

It is the only VM running at that time.


Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,
Joris

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Re: win2003 guest stutters

[Avi Kivity]

Joris wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> Please CC me, I'm not a subscriber to the list.
>
> I have a Debian unstable 64bit host on an intel S3000 quad core xeon
> X3210. Kernel 2.6.22-2-amd64 (debian flavour) and KVM28 and KVM36.
>
> Linux guests run very well.
>
>
> I installed Win2003 EE SP2 with --no-kvm, and disabled ACPI in the
> windows setup.
> Now I'm running this image with kvm -no-acpi -m 1024 -hda
> w2k3image.qcow2 -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap3.
> (note I have KVM enabled at this point)
>
> This image works well half of the time (very responsive and no
> interruptions), but after some time it will completely freeze for a
> period of time (sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes it would seem).
> Both the network and the console are completely unresponsive.
>
> I can't see a pattern as to when it happens: sometimes the guest will
> work for 10 minutes without a hitch, sometimes I can't make it past
> the login screen.
>   

Please try using 'taskset' to pin the VM to one cpu and report.

-- 
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function


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Re: win2003 guest stutters

[Joris]

Hi Avi,


> > Please CC me, I'm not a subscriber to the list.
> Please try using 'taskset' to pin the VM to one cpu and report.

That improves things significantly.

The first minute the symptoms are still present, after that the VM
appears to work smoothly.


This is really great, thanks!

Kind regards,
Joris

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Re: win2003 guest stutters

[Joris]

Helo Avi,


> > This image works well half of the time (very responsive and no
> > interruptions), but after some time it will completely freeze for a
> > period of time (sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes it would seem).
> > Both the network and the console are completely unresponsive.

> Please try using 'taskset' to pin the VM to one cpu and report.

That works! This works especially well if I use taskset right from the
start of the vm...


Thanks,
J

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Re: win2003 guest stutters

[Avi Kivity]

Joris wrote:
> Helo Avi,
>
>
>   
>>> This image works well half of the time (very responsive and no
>>> interruptions), but after some time it will completely freeze for a
>>> period of time (sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes it would seem).
>>> Both the network and the console are completely unresponsive.
>>>       
>
>   
>> Please try using 'taskset' to pin the VM to one cpu and report.
>>     
>
> That works! This works especially well if I use taskset right from the
> start of the vm...
>
>
>   

Well, that's not a good sign.  Things should work even if not pinned.


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error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function


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Re: win2003 guest stutters

[Joris]

Hello Avi,


> >> Please try using 'taskset' to pin the VM to one cpu and report.
> > That works! This works especially well if I use taskset right from the
> > start of the vm...
> Well, that's not a good sign.  Things should work even if not pinned.

Hmm, anything else I can try to debug?


Kind regards, J

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