qemu fails to boot a disk image in gutsy

[Timo Saarinen]

Binary package hint: qemu

I have a disk image containing Windows NT that worked very well under Feisty. After installing Gutsy Tribe-5 and upgrading it qemu can't boot the image but prints:

----
ata0 master: QEMU HARDDISK ATA-7 Hard-Disk (1024 MBytes)
ata1 master: QEMU CD-ROM ATAPI-4 CD-Rom/DVD-Rom

Booting from Hard Disk...
A disk read error occured.
Insert a system diskette and restart
the system
----

The qemu was started with the following command: qemu -m 64 -hda -boot c qemu-winnt.img

Also file command recognizes the image.

$ file qemu-winnt.img
qemu-winnt.img: x86 boot sector, Microsoft Windows XP mbr,Serial 0xf6436bb6

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

After copying the image to a feisty installation and running it in qemu it seems to run very well. In other words this excludes the possibility of a corrupted image.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

This also happens when booting linux images under qemu 0.9.0 under gutsy. They drop to an initramfs prompt after failing to find the root fs. The same image works if you manually install qemu 0.8.2 from feisty

[Soren Hansen (soren)]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:34:01AM -0000, Alan Pope wrote:
> This also happens when booting linux images under qemu 0.9.0 under
> gutsy. They drop to an initramfs prompt after failing to find the root
> fs. The same image works if you manually install qemu 0.8.2 from feisty

What type and size of images are you using?

 status incomplete

--
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

$ qemu-img info qemu-winnt.img
image: qemu-winnt.img
file format: raw
virtual size: 1.0G (1073741824 bytes)
disk size: 1.0G

[Flink Del Dinky (flinkdeldinky)]

I just want to add that I've got the exact same problem as Alan Pope. Under Feisty qemu worked fine but under gutsy I get dropped to an initramfs prompt (the image is Ubuntu 7.04 server). It's as if qemu can't see the filesystem in the image.

Here's a simple version of the command that I use to run qemu (this works fine in Feisty):
qemu-system-x86_64 ubuntu-server.img -m 378

In gutsy (after a long wait) I'll get dropped to initramfs with the same command.

$ ls -l ubuntu-server.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 michael michael 880836608 2007-10-23 02:32 ubuntu-server.img

[Markus Strobl (mstrobl2)]

Same problem here. I have a WinXP installation in QEMU that ran perfectly under feisty. After upgrading to Gutsy, it hangs during boot.

I inserted the WinXP install CD and booted from it. It starts loading installation files off the CD and then BSOD (page fault).

I reverted QEMU back to 0.8, but it is still very flaky. The WinXP desktop came up once, but then crashed. After that it crashes (auto-reboots) during boot.

[Markus Strobl (mstrobl2)]

Forgot to add: I'm running QEMU 0.9 + kernel 2.6.22 on my other PC (which is Gentoo) and it has no problem with running the WinXP QEMU session. So it seems it is something with Gutsy itself, not kernel or QEMU 0.9 related.

[c_t (chefturner)]

There is another bug (also not yet resolved) which might be related: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/qemu/+bug/154960

[pauls (paulatgm)]

I have the same problem with qemu on gutsy. It drops to an initramfs prompt when I try to boot any *buntu 7.10 image.

Anyone know a work around?

[Tim (tim-bounceback)]

Same here, I'm getting the same problem - it drops to an initramfs prompt when booting a 7.10 Desktop image.

[pauls (paulatgm)]

I tried downgrading to feisty's qemu-0.8.2. It will boot and load [k,x]ubuntu, but for some reason my network does not work. It used to work under feisty. So, I tried qemu 0.9.0+20070816 from packages.debian.org, but it will drops to the initramfs prompt also, just like gutsy's qemu.

Now I have tried building qemu from the bellard source with no patches. It will boot successfully, but it will not connect to the network. It's a good thing that gutsy has virtualbox-ose, or I couldn't run a vm.

Anyone have any other ideas?

[mirak (mirak-mirak)]

a guy from #qemu on irc.freenode says that it's a bug from libata that is fixed in earlier cvs.

I am starting to question the efficiency of Ubuntu releases.
This mean the maintainer of the package didn't even ran Qemu at all, because nothing works if uses ide, so well nothing at all in fact ...

[Rui Bernardo (epimeteo)]

Same as Tim here.

One of the VM I created in Feisty, a gutsy install, stopped booting while finding the network interface when I booted after I upgraded the host to Gutsy. I've tried the recovery mode on the guest, but it stopped on the same place (while finding network interface). Then I trashed the VM, created a new disk image and tried to boot it with the Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Desktop CD for a new install. Once more it stopped booting (don't really know where) and gave me an initramfs prompt.

Then I found this bug report.

I had to remove qemu, kqemu, downloaded the qemu and kqemu packages from Feisty, rebuild the module, and finally block the those packages versions in Synaptic so they didn't get upgraded back to the non-functional gutsy package.

Working now with the Feisty packages of *qemu on Gusty.

[pauls (paulatgm)]

Rui, does your network work on gutsy with feisty qemu packages? When I tried it did not work. What is the command line you are using to run it please.

[sciencewhiz (christmasboy-81)]

TAP networking is working for me using the feisty packages on gutsy.

qemu -hda /media/qemu/WindowsMC/WindowsMC.qcow -boot c -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap1 -m 256 -localtime

[Daniel Elstner (daniel-elstner)]

This might be a duplicate of bug #123185. Try if the hardy packages of qemu and bochsbios-qemu work.

[c_t (chefturner)]

Indeed switching to hardy bochsbios fixed the problem for me. I'm now using gutsy qemu and hardy bochsbios. I installed bochsbios using:
sudo wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/b/bochs/bochsbios_2.3+20070705-2ubuntu1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i bochsbios_2.3+20070705-2ubuntu1_all.deb

[Daniel Elstner (daniel-elstner)]

Great! Given this, I've now tagged this bug as a duplicate.

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

Installing bochsbios_2.3+20070705-2ubuntu1_all.deb didn't solve my problem described in the beginning of this page.

[Daniel Elstner (daniel-elstner)]

Darn. I removed the duplicate status.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

This bug was nominated for Gutsy but does currently not qualify for a 7.10 stable release update (SRU) and the nomination is therefore declined. According the the SRU policy, the fix should already be deployed and tested in the current development version before an update to the stable releases will be considered. With 7.10 now released, that policy applies to this bug. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates .

The bug is not being closed as work will continue on fixing it for the next release, Hardy Heron (8.04). To help improve the state of this bug see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures .

[Brian Pitts (bpitts)]

My problem (zenwalk 5.0 would boot with kvm but not qemu) was fixed by installing bochsbios-qemu 2.3.5-1ubuntu1 as referenced at Bug #123185

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

I tested the image in Ubuntu 8.04 snapshot with QEmu version 0.9.0+20070816-1ubuntu3 and bochsbios-qemu version 2.3.5-1ubuntu1. QEmu displays the same error message as cited in beginning of this bug report. The image works fine with Ubuntu 7.04 version of qemu.

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

The software I needed in Windows NT now runs nicely with Wine. Also making a fresh WinNT install in the lates QEmu works fine. In other words, this bug is no longer important for me.

[alex hardy (xstation108)]

but still a bug?

[Timo Saarinen (timosa2)]

Yes, the bug still exists. The image created by version 0.8 of qemu can't be used with version 0.9.

[Soren Hansen (soren)]

As the last year and a half has clearly demonstrated, I don't have time to work on this bug.

If anyone has the time to find the appropriate fix and drive the SRU process for it, I'd be happy to do the sponsoring. Feel free to e-mail me or ping me on IRC if you're up for it!