[Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Zhang Haoyu]

Hi,

When I perform P2V from native servers with win2008 to kvm vm,
some cases failed due to the physical disk was using GPT for partition,
and QEMU doesn't support GPT by default.

And, I see in below site that OVMF can be used to enable UEFI to support GPT,
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/OVMF

But, it seems that OVMF is not stable enough for kvm.

Any advises?

Thanks,
Zhang Haoyu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 22/12/2014 07:39, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I perform P2V from native servers with win2008 to kvm vm,
> some cases failed due to the physical disk was using GPT for partition,
> and QEMU doesn't support GPT by default.
> 
> And, I see in below site that OVMF can be used to enable UEFI to support GPT,
> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/OVMF
> 
> But, it seems that OVMF is not stable enough for kvm.

OVMF is stable.  The main issues are:

1) tools support (libvirt and above), which is being worked on

2) the FAT driver is not free, which prevents distribution in Fedora and
several other distributions

Paolo

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Zhang Haoyu]

On 2014/12/22 17:28, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> 
> On 22/12/2014 07:39, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> When I perform P2V from native servers with win2008 to kvm vm,
>> some cases failed due to the physical disk was using GPT for partition,
>> and QEMU doesn't support GPT by default.
>>
>> And, I see in below site that OVMF can be used to enable UEFI to support GPT,
>> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/OVMF
>>
>> But, it seems that OVMF is not stable enough for kvm.
> 
> OVMF is stable.  The main issues are:
> 
> 1) tools support (libvirt and above), which is being worked on
> 
> 2) the FAT driver is not free, which prevents distribution in Fedora and
> several other distributions
> 
Sorry, I cannot follow you,
the "FAT" mentioned above means FAT filesystem?
what's the relationship between OVMF and FAT?

I want to use OVMF to enable UEFI to support GPT partition for P2V scenario.

Thanks,
Zhang Haoyu
> Paolo
> 

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 22/12/2014 10:40, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
>> 2) the FAT driver is not free, which prevents distribution in Fedora and
>> several other distributions
>>
> Sorry, I cannot follow you,
> the "FAT" mentioned above means FAT filesystem?
> what's the relationship between OVMF and FAT?
> 
> I want to use OVMF to enable UEFI to support GPT partition for P2V scenario.

Yes, I mean FAT filesystem.

The EFI system partition (the one with BOOTX64.EFI) is FAT.  The
filesystem driver is not free, and without the driver you cannot boot a
UEFI system.  So Fedora and other distributions that do not allow
non-free or patent-encumbered software cannot distribute a useful OVMF
build.

Paolo

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Zhang Haoyu]

On 2014/12/22 17:52, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> 
> On 22/12/2014 10:40, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
>>> 2) the FAT driver is not free, which prevents distribution in Fedora and
>>> several other distributions
>>>
>> Sorry, I cannot follow you,
>> the "FAT" mentioned above means FAT filesystem?
>> what's the relationship between OVMF and FAT?
>>
>> I want to use OVMF to enable UEFI to support GPT partition for P2V scenario.
> 
> Yes, I mean FAT filesystem.
> 
> The EFI system partition (the one with BOOTX64.EFI) is FAT.  The
> filesystem driver is not free, and without the driver you cannot boot a
> UEFI system.  So Fedora and other distributions that do not allow
> non-free or patent-encumbered software cannot distribute a useful OVMF
> build.
> 
Paolo,thanks.

> Paolo
> 

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 02:39:27PM +0800, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I perform P2V from native servers with win2008 to kvm vm,
> some cases failed due to the physical disk was using GPT for partition,
> and QEMU doesn't support GPT by default.
> 
> And, I see in below site that OVMF can be used to enable UEFI to support GPT,
> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/OVMF
> 
> But, it seems that OVMF is not stable enough for kvm.

I guess you mean EFI rather than just GPT?

FWIW virt-p2v has some support for EFI, but it's very hairy
and not that well tested.  It tries to modify the guest
to use BIOS for booting.

I'm waiting for good, free EFI support in qemu and then I
can remove such hacks.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into KVM guests.
http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v

Re: [Qemu-devel] Does kvm friendly support GPT?

[Zhang Haoyu]

On 2014-12-22 09:28:52, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>
>On 22/12/2014 07:39, Zhang Haoyu wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> When I perform P2V from native servers with win2008 to kvm vm,
>> some cases failed due to the physical disk was using GPT for partition,
>> and QEMU doesn't support GPT by default.
>> 
>> And, I see in below site that OVMF can be used to enable UEFI to support GPT,
>> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/OVMF
>> 
>> But, it seems that OVMF is not stable enough for kvm.
>
>OVMF is stable.  The main issues are:
>
I download OVMF from https://github.com/tianocore/edk2.git
I build and run OVMF to enable UEFI to start windows7, windows8, windows2008, windows2012,
test results are:
1) windows7 and windows2008 got stuck at boot stage.
   Either the '-vga std' or '-vga qxl' QEMU option is used, but which dosen't work.

2) windows8 and windows2012 started successfully, seems okay for now.
   But error dialog of "no enough resources ..." is reported for rtl8139 and e1000 NIC in windows devices manager,
   virtio NIC is okay.

Any advices?

Thanks,
Zhang Haoyu

>1) tools support (libvirt and above), which is being worked on
>
>2) the FAT driver is not free, which prevents distribution in Fedora and
>several other distributions
>
>Paolo