unable to build a virtualized system

marozsas · 06-26-2007, 07:50 AM

Hi !

My system is F7, and I my Pentium D has the vmx flag. The kernel version is 2.6.21-1.3228.fc7. The kernel modules kvm and kvm_intel are loaded.
I am using virt-manager-0.4.0-2.fc7 and qemu-0.9.0-2.fc7.

I start the Virtual machine Manager, click on the New button, and as Virtualization method I choose Fully virtualized, i686 arch, and select Enable kernel/hardware acceleration.

The installation media is the cdrom/dvdrom, OS Type is Windows and OS Variant is Windows XP. I choose to install this virtual system in its own partition, /dev/sda2 (type 7 - HPFS/NTFS).

The first step of installation goes well. Windows boot from cdrom, it detects the right partition, and I select to install on it and formatting as NTFS. After that it starts to copy the initial files and reboots this time from the /dev/sda2. fine.

Now the problem. After a while it asks for the location of installation files. Its looks for D:\i386, but the cdrom is still there !

Looks like the virtualized system can not find the cdrom device.

Any ideas ? this is my first attempt with virtualization, so I don't have much information so far....

I don't known even if qemu is my best choice. I've read some posts about xen but qemu looks more simpler to start.

Any help is welcome.

crashmeister · 06-27-2007, 07:47 PM

Try qemu-launcher for a gui or virtualbox.

BTW - with qemu and virtualbox you don`t need the kvm module (kvm is a different animal).
Virtualbox comes with its own kernel module and qemu needs the kqemu kernel module to run with decent speed - it does run without the module but it`s real slow.

dovzamir · 06-29-2007, 03:20 AM

Hi,

I have a similar installation, both hardware and software. After encountering the same problem, I installed from a command line instead of the GUI using:

qemu -cdrom /home/dov/Desktop/XP2_PRO_ENG.iso -boot d /VM/WinXP/WinXP.img

If you are using a physical cdrom, then replace the '/home/dov/Desktop/XP2_PRO_ENG.iso' with '/dev/cdrom/', or whatever is relevant.

Problem solved!

marozsas · 06-29-2007, 02:14 PM

Hi guys, thanks for the answers !

Thanks crashmeister for the hint about kqemu. You right, after I loaded the kqemu module there is a noticiable difference in speed. Great !

Thanks dovzamir for the qemu cmd line. With your hint I was able to finish the installation. Now I have an almost working virtualized system.
I learned others switches to qemu too. One which is usefull is "-k pt-br" to have a keyboard layout which matches with my keyboard and the "-m 384" to limit the available RAM to the virtual system.

However, the network is not working.

There is a new network device in the host system, virbr0:

Code:

[root@babylon5 ~]# ifconfig -a
...

virbr0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00  
          inet addr:192.168.160.140  Bcast:192.168.160.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::200:ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:941 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1173 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:64567 (63.0 KiB)  TX bytes:1620946 (1.5 MiB)

It was 192.168.xxx.254 (I don't remember the exact numbers). I changed to match my local network, which is 192.168.160.0/24.

The complete cmd line is:

Code:

/usr/bin/qemu -M pc -k pt-br -m 384  -boot c  -net nic,macaddr=00:16:3e:2d:81:b4,vlan=0 -net tap,fd=11,script=,vlan=0 /dev/sda2

(I copy the -net part from a working instance fired by virt-manager, except it is in another network)

The question is: How to put this virtualized system in the same network the host system is ?

If I left the virbr0 unchanged, then the virtualized system has access to the network but it is in another net (192.168.xxx.0/24), not 192.168.160.0/24. It has access to the 192.168.160.0 and any host in the internet.

The main problem with that, is the clients for this virtual server already are in 192.168.160.0/24 network. And my Domain controller is in 192.168.160.0/24 network too.

any ideas ?

dovzamir · 06-30-2007, 01:32 AM

Hi,

Look at the NIC that was set up in virt-manager for this VM and you will see what qemu is expecting.

Make sure that libvertd is up and running. Do not use your local network definitions. Your host system should act as a router for the gust. So you will see something like 192.169.122.1 as the gateway and dns and 192.168.122.x for the guest system.

What is supposed to happen is the host system should act as a dhcp server for the guest and as a router to your local network. Do not configure your guest system to work on your local addresses. It won't work.

Look at the file /etc/libvert/qemu/"guest-sys".xml to get an idea of the network (and other) definitions being used.

HTH