[kvm] pci_add_option_rom: failed to find romfile "pxe-virtio.bin"

[Dominic Evans]

Binary package hint: qemu-kvm

using 'if=virtio' on -drive and 'model=virtio' on -net previously worked fine on earlier maverick packages

on recent package updates I am now seeing this warning about pci_add_option_rom: failed to find romfile "pxe-virtio.bin"

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: kvm (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-17.23-generic 2.6.35.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-17-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Aug 23 09:25:11 2010
KvmCmdLine:
 UID PID PPID C SZ RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD
 root 2403 2402 15 193921 151212 1 09:24 pts/0 00:00:07 kvm -drive file=ubuntu-server1-snapshot.qcow2,if=virtio,boot=on -net nic,model=virtio,macaddr=DE:AD:BE:EF:10:82 -net tap -m 512 -name ubuntu-server-1 -vnc :1
MachineType: LENOVO 9087AAG
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-17-generic root=UUID=ed073970-9413-4852-8b3a-9d13e27876aa ro splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: qemu-kvm
dmi.bios.date: 04/29/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 2RKT44AUS
dmi.board.name: LENOVO
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: NONE
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: �������������������������
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: NONE
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr2RKT44AUS:bd04/29/2008:svnLENOVO:pn9087AAG:pvrThinkCentreM57p:rvnLENOVO:rnLENOVO:rvrNONE:cvnLENOVO:ct3:cvrNONE:
dmi.product.name: 9087AAG
dmi.product.version: ThinkCentre M57p
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The
error you show is an innocuous one which has shown up (at least on
my machines) for a long time. What happens after on your machine?
Does the VM continue to boot? If not, where does it stop? If there
is never any console output, I may ask for strace output...

[Dominic Evans (oldmanuk)]

You may be correct that it is an innocuous error, (I'm not using PXE boot on my VMs so don't see any otherwise missing functionality) but afaik it never used to appear on lucid and now appears on maverick packages of kvm so its technically a regression.

Having investigated the issue further it seems the `kvm-pxe` package contains this bootroom and installing it makes the warning message go away, so I'm not sure why its not an automatic depends for qemu-kvm?

[Dave Walker (davewalker)]

@Dominic, Is that the only issue you are experiencing? Just the verbose warning?

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Dominic: the error did appear on lucid as well (if kvm-pxe was not
installed). I would prefer that the message wasn't printed, but kvm
does work fine without it, so making kvm-pxe a dependency for kvm
doesn't seem appropriate. And in the interest of minimizing the delta
from upstream, I prefer not to patch our source to not print the message.
If you had the inclination, it might be nice to send a patch upstream to
not print those messages unless booting was going to fail as a result.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

That particular message is benign, as Serge says.

You can silence it by adding the 'suggested' package, kvm-pxe:
 $ sudo apt-get install kvm-pxe