Re: VMs crashing - Ubuntu 8.04, KVM84, libvirt 0.6.1

[Yann Hamon <yann.hamon@thehumanjourney.net>]

> Thanks for the pointer, Lucas.
> 
> I have worked with Yann to get a better KVM onto Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, more
> or less at his request.  At the time, I backported the then-current
> kvm-84 from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), as a stop-gap
> measure, replacing the purely ancient kvm-62.  Last I heard from Yann,
> kvm-84 (and friends) was working much better than kvm-62.

Hello Dustin, thanks for replying here, and thank you again for the backports. The backports indeed fixes major problems that I was having with kvm62 - however I am experiencing regular crashes and haven't been able to figure out why, til now. This didn't occured during my testing phase, and even now occur fairly rarely (one same VM would crash every month or so) - but becomes an issue as you get more vms. 


> Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) has qemu-kvm-0.11, which seems more stable than
> kvm-84, in my experience.  And the under-development Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
> (Lucid) currently has qemu-kvm-0.12.2.
> 
> Once Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid) ships in April (or, if I get some down
> time between now and then), I will attempt to backport
> qemu-kvm-0.12.2 to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).

I think it's more me who assumed I would have a more stable KVM if I sticked to LTS - KVM being relatively new, I might have been better off upgrading every 6 months. Am readying my hosts for 10.4 as I speak...

> There's more than a few complications with doing this backport, and
> it
> takes considerable effort to do so, as there are several pieces that
> must be handled, and thoroughly tested, including at least:
>  a) the modern kvm kernel module, and getting it building under DKMS
>  b) the modern qemu-kvm userspace, getting it building against the
> older toolchain
>  c) the modern libvirt library, getting it building against the older
> toolchain
>  d) testing the interoperability of all of the above

Indeed. Are you aware of any other production deployment using 8.04 experiencing issues? If not, maybe it's just not worth it.

> My efforts are currently 110% committed against developing Ubuntu
> 10.04 LTS (Lucid), and the virtualization stack there.  Yann, and
> anyone wanting a backported virtualization stack against Ubuntu 8.04
> LTS should follow the procedures at:
>  * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports
> and ideally someone from the Ubuntu community with backport
> experience
> can help get a new version building and tested.  If there's someone
> volunteering to help with that work, I'll gladly mentor them and
> guide
> the process, sign, and upload packages to the Ubuntu repositories on
> their behalf.

Oh my KVM hosts don't do much more than KVM, so I'd be fine with any version of Ubuntu, really. Will probably move my dev vms to lucid alpha, and test for a few months - and migrate everything to there after release. From there I might do the 6 months upgrade.
Just thought that if the bug I am having was known and fixed I might get a quick workaround which would have helped me wait :)

Thanks for your reply

-- 
Yann HAMON
Systems Manager
Oxford Archaeology: Exploring the Human Journey
http://thehumanjourney.net


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