12.04 guest hangs on a 14.04 host server with cirrus graphics

[David White]

A new 12.04.4 server guest installation hangs on a 14.04 server host machine.

I did the following:

Created a new Virtual Machine with the Ubuntu 12.04 template using virt-manager
Ran through the installation without a hitch to install a LAMP+SSH server. All standard options apart from that.
On reboot the 12.04 guest started but then hung after doing fsck step.
Trying different options (change disk driver, etc) made it progress a couple more steps but still hung.

The thing that fixed it in the end was to switch to a VGA display driver, away from the default.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Thanks for reporting this bug.

When you say you used a "Ubuntu 12.04 template", do you mean you used
an iso, or something else? If iso, could you please give us the full
url so I can try to reproduce?

As you created the vm in virt-manager, did you change anything from the
defaults?

Could you please attach the domain's broken xml to this bug?

 status: incomplete
 importance: high

[David White (cppege-david-9ei9ny)]

Hi Serge.

Update on this post. It seems that the problem is the display driver choice in the VM settings.

The steps I took in installing were:

Click "New VM" button in virt-manager
Type in name and select local install media. Press Forward.
Select an ISO image. OS Type Linux. Version Ubuntu 12.04 (this is the template I was referring to).

After much experimenting I managed to solve the problem by selecting VGA video mode in the VM's settings. The default causing the problem was Cirrus.

Now that I've got network set up on the VM I've just run the it with Cirrus graphics and am seeing the same problems but I can ssh in. So, it would appear that the console freezes rather than the whole VM freezing.

[David White (cppege-david-9ei9ny)]

The broken VM XML

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

I can reproduce the console not being useful, however I can ssh into the VM. Syslog shows:

[ 7.296919] fb: conflicting fb hw usage cirrusdrmfb vs EFI VGA - removing generic driver
[ 7.433222] [drm:cirrus_vram_init] *ERROR* can't reserve VRAM
[ 7.433234] cirrus 0000:00:02.0: Fatal error during GPU init: -6

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

A subsequent (clean) reboot results in a working console.

So it sounds like qemu is not properly resetting its hardware during the first reboot.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Getting a working console is quite hit-or-miss

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Note that on a successful boot, dmesg | grep cirrus shows:

[ 9.064581] fb: conflicting fb hw usage cirrusdrmfb vs EFI VGA - removing generic driver
[ 9.133808] fbcon: cirrusdrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 9.431359] cirrus 0000:00:02.0: fb0: cirrusdrmfb frame buffer device
[ 9.431362] cirrus 0000:00:02.0: registered panic notifier
[ 9.652851] [drm] Initialized cirrus 1.0.0 20110418 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0

I can also reproduce this on qemu built from upstream git head (earlier this week) so marking as affecting the upstream project.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Actually I suppose this could be a seabios bug? (I am on 1.7.4-4)

[Colin (cspurr)]

I'm also having issues with libvirt/kvm guests becoming unresponsive and they were all using cirrus as their video model. I've tried switching some to vga to see if that helps.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

The errors about the frame buffer device happen because grub is started in graphical mode and then the boot wants to replace the framebuffer device/driver while plymouth still holds it. I thought we should have fixed this before release by adding cirrus to the list of graphics that should get initialized late. So are people still having this issue with the latest updates?
A work around if this really still happens is to change /etc/default/grub and uncomment the console mode. Not ultimately nice but should be working.

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

Triaging old bug tickets... can you still reproduce this issue with the latest version of QEMU? Or could we close this ticket nowadays?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for QEMU because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for qemu (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]