Add serial console in xml configuration file generated by vm-builder

[Lionel Porcheron]

It may be a good idea to add in xml configuration file generated by vm-builder the definition of the serial port. Actually, we habe to add it by hand :(. I have to add in the xml file the following lines:
8<---------------------------
    <serial type='pty'>
      <target port='0'/>
    </serial>
    <console type='pty'>
      <target port='0'/>
    </console>
8<---------------------------

It would be even beter if we have a way (option in vmbuilder ?) to activate the serial console (getty listening on ttyS0 and grub beeing aware of this console).

[Nick Barcet (nijaba)]

Even though an option would make sense, do you know that you can use the --templates option to set this in a more permanent way?

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder#Modifying%20the%20libvirt%20template%20to%20use%20bridging for an example of how to use it

Thanks a lot for suggesting this in any case.

[seph (seph)]

I'm just starting to play with 10.04, and ran into this. Not having easy console access for remote virtual servers is a big step backwards from xen. Sure, I can use templates, and work around all these, but there's a lot of extra work for what I think should be normal.

[Sergey Svishchev (svs)]

This still won't give full serial console access (BIOS and GRUB won't be configured).

In Karmic, replacing VGA BIOS with Google's SGABIOS works, and GRUB can be configured in --execscript. In Lucid, these workarounds don't work anymore (the latter is bug 703959).

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Sergey, the other bug notwithstanding, do you have a patch against vmbuilder which you've been using to always define a serial console, or have you been using templates (or doing it by hand)?

[Sergey Svishchev (svs)]

I've been using execscript, like this:

target=$1

(printf "serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1\nterminal --dumb serial\n\n"; cat $target/boot/grub/menu.lst) > $target/tmp/menu.lst && mv $target/tmp/menu.lst $target/boot/grub/menu.lst

chroot $target sed -i -e '/^# kopt=/s/^\(.*\)$/\1 console=ttyS0,115200n8/; /^# defoptions=/s/=.*$/=/' \
  /boot/grub/menu.lst
chroot $target update-grub

[Sergey Svishchev (svs)]

SGABIOS hack is:

sudo dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /usr/share/qemu/vgabios-cirrus.bin
sudo ln .../sgabios.bin /usr/share/qemu/vgabios-cirrus.bin

(symlink is not enough for some reason)

[Sergey Svishchev (svs)]

SGABIOS support was added to QEMU recently (07 June) -- http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/95803/