spice-vdagent seems not to be working in jammy when connecting from noble

[Bartosz Woronicz]

Steps to reproduce

1. Create LXD VM desktop-jammy on Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) host
lxc init --vm ubuntu:22.04 desktop-jammy
2. lxc start desktop-noble
3. lxc exec desktop-noble bash
4. Install ubuntu-desktop metapackage
apt update
apt install -y ubuntu-desktop
5. Set passwd for ubuntu user
$ passwd ubuntu

6. Disable systemd-networkd-wait-online.service (otherwise it will wait for timeout)
 systemctl disable --now systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

7. Reboot

8. Connect to the vga console
lxc console --type=vga desktop-jammy
Wait for login screen to load

Expected result

The GDM login menu should appear

The actual result

The screen is stuck.
I saw that the daemon is not running
root@desktop-jammy:~# systemctl status spice-vdagentd
○ spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ● spice-vdagentd.socket
I started it
root@desktop-jammy:~# systemctl start spice-vdagentd
root@desktop-jammy:~# journalctl -u spice-vdagentd -f
Feb 11 17:26:14 desktop-jammy systemd[1]: Starting Agent daemon for Spice guests...
Feb 11 17:26:14 desktop-jammy systemd[1]: Started Agent daemon for Spice guests.
root@desktop-jammy:~# systemctl status spice-vdagentd
● spice-vdagentd.service - Agent daemon for Spice guests
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/spice-vdagentd.service; indirect; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2025-02-11 17:26:14 UTC; 9s ago
TriggeredBy: ● spice-vdagentd.socket
    Process: 866 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd $SPICE_VDAGENTD_EXTRA_ARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 867 (spice-vdagentd)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 8872)
     Memory: 856.0K
        CPU: 6ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/spice-vdagentd.service
             └─867 /usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd

Feb 11 17:26:14 desktop-jammy systemd[1]: Starting Agent daemon for Spice guests...
Feb 11 17:26:14 desktop-jammy systemd[1]: Started Agent daemon for Spice guests.

but still when I retry connecting to vga console the screen is stuck on loading and shows nothing
When you check the systemd status it says
root@desktop-jammy:~# systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 428ms (kernel) + 7.285s (userspace) = 7.713s
graphical.target reached after 7.141s in userspace

When you try the same for ubuntu:24.04 all works as expected and you also see the system logs on loading before seeing the Login screen.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: spice-vdagent 0.22.1-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-1073.78-kvm 5.15.168
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-1073-kvm x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.6
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CloudArchitecture: x86_64
CloudID: lxd
CloudName: lxd
CloudPlatform: lxd
CloudSubPlatform: LXD socket API v. 1.0 (/dev/lxd/sock)
Date: Tue Feb 11 17:28:08 2025
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=C.UTF-8
SourcePackage: spice-vdagent
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Bartosz Woronicz (mastier1)]

I think I found the culprit. When installing from ISO it installs HWE kernel.

LXD 5.21 LTS uses the Virtio GPU by default but the ubuntu:22.04 image uses 5.15 generic kernel which does not have virtio_gpu driver

ubuntu@desktop-jammy-vm:~$ lshw -C display
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Virtio GPU
       vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=virtio-pci latency=0
       resources: iomemory:80-7f irq:21 memory:80000000-807fffff memory:800300000-800303fff memory:80800000-80800fff memory:c0000-dffff
  *-graphics
       product: EFI VGA
       physical id: 1
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       capabilities: fb
       configuration: depth=32 resolution=1280,800
WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

The way out of this situation is to install HWE kernel

$ apt install -y linux-virtual-hwe-22.04

and reboot

[Bartosz Woronicz (mastier1)]

This is weird that generic kernel 5.15 does not have this driver compiled

root@desktop-jammy:~# dpkg -S virtio-gpu.ko
linux-modules-6.8.0-57-generic: /lib/modules/6.8.0-57-generic/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/virtio/virtio-gpu.ko

root@desktop-jammy:~# apt search linux-modules |grep installed

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

linux-modules-5.15.0-1073-kvm/jammy-updates,jammy-security,now 5.15.0-1073.78 amd64 [installed,automatic]
linux-modules-6.8.0-57-generic/jammy-updates,jammy-security,now 6.8.0-57.59~22.04.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]

Especially because the headers got the driver header file

root@desktop-jammy:~# dpkg -S virtio_gpu
linux-hwe-6.8-headers-6.8.0-57: /usr/src/linux-hwe-6.8-headers-6.8.0-57/include/uapi/linux/virtio_gpu.h
libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/virtio_gpu_dri.so
linux-kvm-headers-5.15.0-1073: /usr/src/linux-kvm-headers-5.15.0-1073/include/uapi/linux/virtio_gpu.h