Vmware ESX under KVM - guest GPF in installer

Vmware ESX under KVM - guest GPF in installer

[Ian Kirk]

Hi,

I wanted to try running Vmware ESX without the effort of finding a
physical machine. Googling around I found that it is possible to run ESX
under other hypervisors/emulators, e.g. Vmware Workstation. So I thought
i'd give KVM a go.

Using kvm-66 on 2.6.24.4-64.fc8PAE, the (mostly text mode) installer
crashes after starting with "esx text". (I can't easily test kvm-68 at the
mo due to needing to do a reboot of the host)

Microsoft Virtual Server R2-SP1 kinda works, however the virtual NIC
is unsupported by the ESX installer.

Qemu 0.9.1 (for Windows) fails at a similar point.

Is this a "fixed in newer kvm" or a generic problem (be it kvm or ESX
installer CDROM kernel) ?

I hadn't even got as far as installing/running ESX.

Regards,
Ian


host dmesg says:
kvm: emulating exchange as write
kvm: 9329: cpu0 unhandled rdmsr: 0xc0000080
kvm: 9350: cpu0 unhandled rdmsr: 0xc0000080

guest kernel says:
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
general protection fault: 0000
CPU:    0
EIP:    0060:[<c02ba1b1>]    Not tainted
EFLAGS: 00010206

EIP is at  (2.4.21-47.0.1.ELBOOT/i686)
eax: 0191abfd   ebx: c0293580   ecx: c0000080   edx: 00000001
esi: 00000001   edi: 00000002   ebp: c0293580   esp: c02b5fc8
ds: 0068   cs: 0060   es: 0068   ss: 0068
Process swapper (pid: 0, stackpage=c02b5000)
Stack: c02ba34a c0293580 c0293580 00000800 00039800 c0107000 0002e000
c02b6192
       c0293580 c02b6679 0001fff0 0001fff0 c02e8480 c010018c
Call Trace:   [<c0107000>]  (0xc02b5fdc)

Code: 0f 32 a9 00 08 00 00 74 09 a1 74 0e 2d c0 85 c0 74 0d c7 05

Kernel panic: Fatal exception
In idle task - not syncing


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Re: [kvm-devel] Vmware ESX under KVM - guest GPF in installer

[Avi Kivity]

Ian Kirk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wanted to try running Vmware ESX without the effort of finding a
> physical machine. Googling around I found that it is possible to run ESX
> under other hypervisors/emulators, e.g. Vmware Workstation. So I thought
> i'd give KVM a go.
>
> Using kvm-66 on 2.6.24.4-64.fc8PAE, the (mostly text mode) installer
> crashes after starting with "esx text". (I can't easily test kvm-68 at the
> mo due to needing to do a reboot of the host)
>
> Microsoft Virtual Server R2-SP1 kinda works, however the virtual NIC
> is unsupported by the ESX installer.
>
> Qemu 0.9.1 (for Windows) fails at a similar point.
>
> Is this a "fixed in newer kvm" or a generic problem (be it kvm or ESX
> installer CDROM kernel) ?
>
> I hadn't even got as far as installing/running ESX.
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>
>
> host dmesg says:
> kvm: emulating exchange as write
> kvm: 9329: cpu0 unhandled rdmsr: 0xc0000080
> kvm: 9350: cpu0 unhandled rdmsr: 0xc0000080
>   

Yes, EFER support was added recently.  Are you using the modules from 
kvm-66 or from your host kernel?

Please try kvm-66's modules and report.  I was able to boot the esx 
installer (I had to specify -smp 2 as there seem to be problems with the 
mptable on uniprocessors).

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

Re: [kvm-devel] Vmware ESX under KVM - guest GPF in installer

[Avi Kivity]

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Yes, EFER support was added recently.  Are you using the modules from 
> kvm-66 or from your host kernel?
>
> Please try kvm-66's modules and report.  I was able to boot the esx 
> installer (I had to specify -smp 2 as there seem to be problems with 
> the mptable on uniprocessors).
>

esx 3.5 didn't want to run, though, complaining about the lack of mtrr 
support.


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