[rhelv6-beta-list] KVM virt-install/seabios fail PXE boot

Phil Meyer pmeyer at themeyerfarm.com
Mon Oct 11 17:50:26 UTC 2010


We are having difficulty determining exactly what is the cause, but the 
symptom is repeatable.

Here is what we run for an install:

virt-install --noreboot --hvm --virt-type=kvm --pxe 
--name=008949-akrteria.com --ram=1024 --vcpus=1 --arch=x86_64 
--uuid=9d50ff43-746a-48a0-8d02-1ee8a6c3bcf8 --os-type=windows 
--os-variant=win2k8 --disk path=/dev/mapper/008949,bus=virtio,cache=none 
--network=bridge=br1,model=virtio,mac=52:54:ac:14:24:f4 --vnc 
--vnclisten=0.0.0.0 --noautoconsole --wait=-1


As you can see, this depends on a PXE boot.

Unfortunately, no packets hit the bridged interface during the PXE boot 
process.

We have tried various qemu supported drivers, all with the same effect:  
no packets hit the server's bridged interface.

KVM VMs that were previously installed, work normally, including network 
traffic over this same bridge.

One item of interest:  If the virtio network driver is used, as in the 
above example, we get a message from the bios: 'Using legacy NIC wrapper 
on ...' displayed on the screen prior to the PXE boot attempt.  Other 
drivers, such a e1000, do not generate that message.

RHEL6-Beta# rpm -qa | grep virt

libvirt-0.8.1-13.el6.x86_64
libvirt-client-0.8.1-13.el6.x86_64
libvirt-python-0.8.1-13.el6.x86_64
python-virtinst-0.500.3-5.el6.noarch
virt-manager-0.8.4-6.el6.noarch
virt-top-1.0.4-3.1.el6.x86_64
virt-viewer-0.2.1-2.el6.x86_64

Here are the versions as we have installed in production on our RHEL 5.5 
servers, and which servers work just fine:

RHEL5.5# rpm -qa | grep virt

libvirt-0.6.3-33.el5_5.1
libvirt-python-0.6.3-33.el5_5.1
python-virtinst-0.500.3-2
virtio-win-1.0.0-11.45801.el5
virt-top-1.0.1-7.el5
virt-viewer-0.0.2-3.el5

We updated the python-virtinst manually.

Any pointers are welcome!

Thanks.







More information about the rhelv6-beta-list mailing list