[fedora-virt] Fedora virt status

[Mark McLoughlin]

Fedora 12
=========

The Fedora 12 release is drawing closer and closer. Beta is on its way
out the door and release candidate composes will begin in less than
four weeks time.

Helping Out
===========

Here are three ways you could help out with getting F12 into great
shape:

  1) Test, test, test and file bugs. The more stuff you break, the
     more will get fixed.

     Maybe you could even write some test cases; for examples, just
     take a look at:

       https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-17_Virtualization
       https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-05-07_Virtualization

  2) Follow the action in bugzilla. See this wiki page for how to sign
     up to receive all bugzilla emails relating to Fedora
     virtualization:

       https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Virtualization_bugs

  3) Take a look at some existing bugs and see if you can help out
     getting them closed. A good place to start is the F12 target
     list:

       https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F12VirtTarget&hide_resolved=1

     But be warned, you may quickly find yourself becoming a package
     co-maintainer! :-)

Test Day
========

Earlier this month, a dedicated bunch of folks got together on irc for
the day to see what they could break:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-17_Virtualization

To give you an idea of the success of the day, here's a selection of
the bugs reported:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523953 (mbanas)
    libvirtd segfault with NIC hot-unplug

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524012 (vbenes)
    libvirt cannot hot-unplug devices which were not previously
    hot-plugged

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524022 (vbenes)
    qemu gets confused with NIC hotplug when no model is specified

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523914 (jdenemar)
    Mouse does not move in PV Xen guest under RHEL-5.4

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523941 (jdenemar)
    kernel 2.6.31-1[24].fc12 doesn't boot in xen PV guest

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523971 (jdenemar)
    xm save hangs with kernel-2.6.31-14.fc12 running as a PV guest
    under RHEL-5.4

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523939 (mrezanin)
    Save on restored machine failed

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523623 (drjones)
    grub.conf needs console=hvc0 in kernel command-line when installed
    as DomU

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524039 (drjones)
    block device cannot be detached from DomU

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524052 (drjones)
    Boot hang when installing HVM DomU

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524035 (vbenes)
    libvirt should support USB device detach

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524045 (vbenes)
    accessing non existing usb device cause guest to stop

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523158 (santwana)
    libvirtd segault during virsh restore

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523956 (clalance)
    Starting libvirtd by hand causes denials

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523970 (jstodola)
    virsh help output not sorted

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523993 (clalance)
    KVM Live migration failure with SELinux Enforcing

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524047 (gianluca)
    virt-viewer outputs nothing if connecting to a non existent VM

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522683 (plambert)
    USB devices do not mount and are not seen by 12-alpha KVM

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523948 (phan)
    VM cannot boot from the disk converted by qemu-img

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524229 (santwana)
    Local migration of kvm guest fails in Fedora12 Alpha

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524268 (santwana)
    KVM guest fails to start up after virt-snapshot in Fedora12

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524033 (jstodala)
    libvirt should check the permissions on all paths before starting
    qemu

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523960 (mnowak)
    virtinst saves images where qemu can't access them by default

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517379 (adamw)
    virt-manager should warn if guest images will are not readable by
    qemu

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524083 (emcnabb)
    virt-manager storage "Allocation" field can be set higher than
    "Max Capacity"

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524085 (emcnabb)
    Help button on virt-manager "New Storage Volume" page broken

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524109 (lmr)
    virt-manager: Fails to install guest using ISO file - internal
    error unable to start guest: qemu: 'iso' invalid format

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524111 (lmr)
    virt-manager can't hold pointer grab on VMs (VNC mode)

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524117 (lmr)
    virt-manager: Error installing guests - can't mount the /
    filesystem after the install process is finished

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524118 (P Rauser)
    NFS4 connection to virtual guest NFS4 server fails over bridged
    interface

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524205 (vbenes)
    virt-manager cloning operations should be cancelable

Merging Lists
=============

Jon Stanley raised the issue again of whether the fedora-virt and
fedora-xen mailing lists should be merged:

  http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/thread.html#00000

It looks like we'll do this when the lists switch over to the
lists.fedoraproject.org server.

virt-dostuff
============

Rich Jones announce another couple of tools in the ever growing
libguestfs toolsuite, virt-rescue and virt-edit:

  http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-September/msg00099.html

Bugs
====

DOOM-O-METER: 198 bugs open now, 214 open three weeks ago. Progress!

The Fedora 12 blocker list is:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F12VirtBlocker&hide_resolved=1

and the Fedora 12 target list is:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F12VirtTarget&hide_resolved=1

All these queries can be found on:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Virtualization_bugs

Ongoing Bugs
============

== kernel ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526869
    Add virtio_blk support cache flush (VIRTIO_BLK_F_FLUSH)

    Christoph points out that we should make sure F-12 virtio_blk
    supports cache flushing for future host versions.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/525890
    Backport virtio patches for optimised virtio-net

    Some debate about whether backporting some changes from 2.6.32
    virtio_net is worth the risk.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524508
    kvm regression between 2.6.29 and 2.6.30 causes guest to become
    unresponsive

    Reporter has confirmed that his KVM hangs are a regression between
    2.6.29 and 2.6.30.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523900
    Garbage in KVM guest console when guest runs kernel
    2.6.30.5-43.fc11

    A video console under KVM regression between 2.6.29 and 2.6.30.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524808
    kernel-2.6.31-33.fc12.x86_64 fail to boot with VT-d enabled and
    intel_iommu=on
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490477
    [Intel IOMMU] Using isochronous DMAR unit on ICH10 board causes
    _other_ DMAR unit to stop working.

    David Woodhouse continues fighting away at VT-d bugs.

== misc ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/501720
    upstart does not launch a login process on /dev/hvc0 in all cases

    Since virtio_console is undergoing major changes, we've punted
    this until Fedora 13.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/492082
    Re-phrase anaconda's terrifying "uninitialized drive" warning

    Looks like anaconda devs just want to close this.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523296
    When Qemu/SDL is fullscreen xrandr dual-monitor configuration
    breaks

    Looks like SDL's fullscreen support can somehow screw up xrandr
    configuration.

== qemu ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524734
      KVM guest ext3 errors at shutdown when using virtio and a qcow2
      backing file

     An Ubuntu guest on F12 using a qcow2 backing file and virtio sees
     ext3 errors.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526381
    qcow2 performance bad under i/o load

    Quite worrying given tha qcow2 performance is an F-12
    feature. However, it looks like this may be just that these are
    compressed qcow2 which are not expected to have good performance.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526777
    Guest PXE booting doesn't work when using ne2k_pci NIC model
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526776
    Add rtl8209 to gpxe-roms-qemu

    Eduardo points out that we're including the wrong PXE ROM for
    ne2k_pci. This is also true in F-11.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523312
    KVM guest freezes during DesktopBSD 1.7 installation

    This issue on a Fedora 11 host sounds like it might be storage
    related.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523592
    qemu-kvm segfault when attaching USB audio device

    We have a stack trace for this main loop segfault on F11 with USB
    passthrough.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524723
    Windows XP KVM gets BSOD with HP all-in-one usb device attached

    An issue with USB passthrough on Fedora 11.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503156
    qemu VNC :: xterm inside VM shows garbled text

    A patch destined for 0.10.7 that should have fixed this has, in
    fact, made things worse.

== libvirt ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524732
    org.libvirt.manage policy kit denial

    Tom Horsley is seeing polkit denials with virsh and virt-maanger.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517157
    libvirt fails to start guest on NFS even when sebool virt_use_nfs
    is on

    F12 has a fix to handle EOPNOTSUPP from setfilecon() when running
    on NFS. Need this in F11 too.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/516430
    libvirt cannot re-label a disk image under an NTFS partition

    Looks like a similar issue to the NFS one, except we don't have a
    virt_use_ntfs sebool.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524770
    'virsh vol-path' command doesn't support "name" parameter
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524776
    Describe vol-key vol-path, vol-name commands wrongly in help doc

    Some of the storage volume commands seem to be quite messed up
    ever since they were introduced.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/525073
    cannot delete storage pool with virsh pool-delete

    Another issue with virsh's storage commands.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526769
    libvirt logrotate settings should roll over weekly instead of
    daily

    libvirt's logrotate settings are proving to be quite annoying, so
    we're switching it to only roll-over weekly.

== virt-manager ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522823
    virt-manager doc screenshots are outdated

    The Fedora 12 version of virt-manager has a radically different
    UI, but the help documentation hasn't been updated yet.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522720
    virt-manager cloning a guest with a 3Gib image creates a 23Gib
    image

    virt-manager appears to get confused about image sizes when
    cloning a guest.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524297
    F11 virt-manager doesn't allow KVM memory ballooning

    Looks like this is fixed in F12, so it's purely a case of whether
    we should make the effort to fix in F11 too.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526077
    virt-manager toolbar buttons should have tooltips

    According to the GNOME HIG, all toolbar buttons should have
    tooltips, especially ones without a label.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526076
    some virt-manager toolbar icons are blurry

    Eagle eyed Michael Monreal spotted that some of virt-manager's new
    icons seem to be blurry due to inappropriate scaling. He even
    included a nice screenshot demonstrating the problem.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526111
    virt-manager add storage volume allows an empty name field

    Minor problem with virt-manager not checking the volume name text
    entry for data.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526488
    virt-manager's 'Details' dialog has a poorly placed 'Remove'
    button
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526491
    virt-manager has no confirmation dialog when deleting a virtual
    disk

    Matt Booth accidentally deleted a few guest images because of a
    combination of these bugs.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526648
    virt-maanger's "New VM" window disappears when connection expander
    is closed

    Yet another minor virt-manager UI quirklet.

== virt-clone ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524269
    virt-clone should demove old udev rules when changing MAC address

    Could be implemented using libguestfs.

== xen ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523914
    Mouse does not move in PV Xen guest under RHEL-5.4

    A rather interesting, complex, twisty bug report detailing why xen
    and evdev have conspired to break the mouse in Fedora 12 Xen
    guests.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523489
    32-bit rawhide xen kernel spins 100% cpu booting on CentOS 5.2
    Dom0

    Xen DomU boot failure.

Resolved Bugs
=============

== misc ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/507397
    Directory permissions on volume group directory too restrictive

    This blocker issue with lvm2 was first fixed by a large change to
    using udev, but that broken anaconda so it was reverted, and then
    it was fixed by a much more minor change.

== kernel ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/520119
    virtio_net page allocation failure

    Rusty came up with a fix for this in 2.6.31, so we need to
    backport it to 2.6.30 in Fedora 11.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524229
    Local migration of kvm guest fails in Fedora12 Alpha

    A PVMMU bug which has been fixed in 2.6.31.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/509383
    rotational mode is much faster for virtio-blk disks, but uses
    non-rotational mode by default

    Justin has applied Christoph's fix for this in rawhide and
    F-11.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/512358
    Unable to boot using qemu-kvm and gPXE from virt-preview
    repository

    This is now fixed in Fedora 11.

== qemu ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524022
    qemu's pci_add monitor command should not exit() if the NIC model
    is not valid

    Markus fixed this upstream and the patches have now been pulled
    into F12.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524695
    qemu should print strerror info for disk/kernel/initrd access
    errors

    Cole points out that since we're getting a lot of problems with
    qemu not being able to access files since we made it run as an
    unprivileged user, we should really fix qemu's error
    messages. Justin has sent a patch upstream and included it for
    F12.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522683
    svirt blocks USB passthrough, even with virt_use_usb enabled -
    /sys/bus/usb/devices

    Looks like svirt is breaking USB passthrough by blocking access to
    /sys/bus/usb/devices. Dan Walsh fixed this in rawhide.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522994
    KVM Fedora 11 guest networking fails with latest (2.6.30.5-43)
    kernel.

    F-11 qemu-kvm was missing a crucial piece of GSO support which
    caused networking to break with 2.6.30 guests. This was only a
    problem for people using qemu-kvm directly from the command line
    because libvirt wasn't enabling GSO (#526472). Fixed now in
    updates-testing.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/509532
    Move /usr/bin/qemu-kvm into the qemu-kvm package

    danpb points out that the qemu-kvm package should go away
    eventually, so we should keep it as an empty meta-package for
    comps.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523677
    add support for s390x

    Dan Horák proposed that Ulrich Hecht's patch to add support for
    s390 to qemu be included in Fedora, but it was decided to just
    wait for the patch to get upstream.

== libvirt ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524499
    libvirt should not enable qemu's audio backend, even with selinux
    disabled

    Now that we run qemu as an unprivileged user, we should never
    enable qemu's sdl/pulse audio backend. A patch to do that from
    upstream is now in F-12.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/497131
    svirt fails to relabel qcow2 backing files

    This has been fixed by using libvirt's existing image format
    probing code to determine the backing file and then re-labelling
    it. Patch has been backported to F-12 now.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/526472
    libvirt fails to enable IFF_VNET_HDR on tap fds for qemu-kvm

    In F-11 libvirt was failing to recognise that qemu had GSO
    support; fixed by backporting patches to re-work how libvirt
    probes qemu versions.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523766
    AVCs from libvirtd startup

    A bunch of SELinux AVCs during libvirtd startup that look like
    they might be fixed by latest upstream netcf. Fixed by Dan Walsh
    in latest rawhide.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517617
    libvirt/netcf loads modprobe.conf and others - AVC messages
    (preventing libvirtd (virtd_t) "getattr" modules_conf_t)

    More netcf related AVCs which have been fixed.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/520864
    libvirt is using untrusted 'info vcpus' PID data for already
    running VM after libvirtd restart
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/465532
    RFE: libvirt should support KVM huge page backed memory
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517619
    libvirtd should chown dirs when qemu configured to run as root/root

    All fixed in rawhide by libvirt-0.7.1.

== python-virtinst ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/523960
    virtinst saves images where qemu can't access them by default

    Cole has fixed this by making virtinst added qemu to the ACLs for
    the directories qemu will need access to.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/524109
    virt-manager: Fails to install guest using ISO file - internal
    error unable to start guest: qemu: 'iso' invalid format

    The fix for bug #517151 introduces another problem; Cole has now
    fixed that one in rawhide.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499654
    failure to add more than 16 virtio-blk devices in virt-manager
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/505317
    virtinst: make SLES11 guests use virtio by default
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/506319
    virtinst errors finding default bridge: upsets virt-manager

    Various F11 virtinst bugs fixed by python-virtinst-0.400.3-9.fc11.

== virt-manager ==

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517379
    virt-manager should warn if guest images will are not readable by
    qemu

    When attaching any storage to a guest we now attempt to verify
    that the 'qemu' user has search access. If not, we warn the user
    and offer to fix, using ACLs. The user can opt out, and optionally
    'Never ask about this path again" if we have any false positives.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/517664
    virt-manager ignores "Host does not support any virtualization
    options" error

    Cole has made this error condition a bit more obvious to the
    user.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/522823
    virt-manager doc screenshots are outdated

    The help docs are so woefully out of date, Cole has just disabled
    them for now.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502777
    virt-manager does not recalculate free disk space on new VM
    creation

    While the 'New VM' dialog is up, virt-manager now polls every 3
    seconds to check the available disk space on the host.