It's hard to send Alt+SysRQ+<key> combination to VirtualBox VMs

[Dmitry Guryanov]

Linux has a very useful debugging technique, magic sysrq - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key. It can perform different low-level operations or print debug information to the kernel log. It's not possible to press this combination using keyboard because of xinput, VirtualBox keyboard emulation or something else. But fortunately you can use VBoxManage command to send scancodes to the VM.

It hard to remember keyboard scancodes and type them every time you want to send alt+sysrq combination. So let's write some tool for it.

[Bug Checker Bot (bug-checker)]

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[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/323171
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/fuel-virtualbox/commit/?id=30af233b8a98c2b86775b5de1cc6fc76a36074b4
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 30af233b8a98c2b86775b5de1cc6fc76a36074b4
Author: Dmitry Guryanov <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Jun 2 17:18:33 2016 +0300

    Add tool for sending Alt-SysRq to VMs

    This tool is a helper for sending Alt+SysRq+<key> combination
    to the guest OS in VirtualBox VM, which is used in Linux for
    printing different sorts of debug messages to the kernel log,
    like list of processes, stack traces of CPUs and so on, or for
    performing actions: reboot, sync e.t.c. It's very useful when
    all other ways to communicate to the VM become unavailable.

    Closes-Bug: #1588383
    Change-Id: I63864d8e575a73f5efec6e55cc02483a59935307

[Maksim Malchuk (mmalchuk)]

Good work! We actually need this in 9.0 too.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: stable/mitaka
Review: https://review.openstack.org/324563

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/324563
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/fuel-virtualbox/commit/?id=a53dba7a1c880243c7b932a67d4f2b31fb99efe4
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: stable/mitaka

commit a53dba7a1c880243c7b932a67d4f2b31fb99efe4
Author: Dmitry Guryanov <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Jun 2 17:18:33 2016 +0300

    Add tool for sending Alt-SysRq to VMs

    This tool is a helper for sending Alt+SysRq+<key> combination
    to the guest OS in VirtualBox VM, which is used in Linux for
    printing different sorts of debug messages to the kernel log,
    like list of processes, stack traces of CPUs and so on, or for
    performing actions: reboot, sync e.t.c. It's very useful when
    all other ways to communicate to the VM become unavailable.

    Closes-Bug: #1588383
    Change-Id: I63864d8e575a73f5efec6e55cc02483a59935307
    (cherry picked from commit 30af233b8a98c2b86775b5de1cc6fc76a36074b4)

[Kyrylo Romanenko (kromanenko)]

Very useful tool, thanks!