Category Archives: QEMU/KVM

Virt-Manager and Autostart

Posted by on September 5, 2014 No comments

virsh autostart instancename
virsh autostart instancename –disable

Magic Qemu USB 3.0 with Windows Guest Recipe

Posted by on September 4, 2014 1 comment

I now have a working USB 3.0 drive on my Windows 7 guest using QEMU 2.1. Here is what I think is the working “Recipe” for this on Ubuntu 14.04:

Get the newest (at the time of this writing) Seabios: from http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/seabios/seabios_1.7.5-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i seabios_1.7.5-1_all.deb
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jacob/virtualisation
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I then got my Windows 7 driver from http://plugable.com/drivers/renesas. I chose the driver for the older card listed on that page: “Plugable PCI-e cards purchased before 10/16/2012 are µPD720200 based and require the 2.1.39.0 driver package.” The direct link for the download is https://s3.amazonaws.com/plugable/bin/2014-03-Plugable-Renesas-USB-3.0-200-2.1.39.0.zip

After installing the driver, everything worked!

Other notes:

I am not using passthrough (although I will probably test this later to see if there is any performance difference).
I am using Virt-Manager from the ppa above (THANK YOU Jacob Zimmermann!)
I have the usb controller set to usb 3.0 in the VM configuration.

There was much rejoicing — but I will spare the world any and all images of my happy dance… NO ONE wants to see that..!

Seabios 1.7.5 and Qemu 2.1

Posted by on September 3, 2014 No comments

So apparently I may need a new version of Seabios (1.7.5) to use the new version of qemu from the ppa I was tryng…

I can’t find a Trusty port, so I’m going to use a .deb package from “Jessie” which is (I think) the version Ubunutu 14.04 is based off of.
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/seabios/seabios_1.7.5-1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i seabios_1.7.5-1_all.deb
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jacob/virtualisation
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Well, it doesn’t crash…

It recognizes the USB controller, but I can’t see the either USB memory stick or my external drive…

Remote-Viewer

Posted by on September 2, 2014 No comments

Why can’t I seem to remember that I seem to need remote-viewer for two-headed VM’s? URL format: spice://host:port — for me that means localhost:5900. Need coffee…

The Qemu adventure continues

Posted by on September 2, 2014 2 comments

The PPA didn’t do so well on my notebook — or at least with my Windows Guest VM. It now reboots in a continuous loop. I can start it with the qemu that I previously compiled, but not with the PPA version. May try installing a Linux guest and see if it works with the one out of the PPA. That is really the only type of guest I had tried with the PPA version… Ah well, I am getting to be an old hand at installing Ubuntu… Worst case is I get to do that again.

Taking the plunge and adding a ppa for QEMU 2.1 and its cohorts…

Posted by on September 1, 2014 No comments

Because I’m basically a pretty lazy admin (and the repository looks really attractive), I’m going to go ahead and add the following to my /etc/apt/sources.list on my notebook for further testing with a Windows guest.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jacob/virtualisation/ubuntu trusty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jacob/virtualisation/ubuntu trusty main

This is the one I mentioned in an earlier post. It is maintained by Jacob Zimmermann who appears to know what he’s doing. Which definitely puts him well ahead of me…

This looks like what I will be getting with this…

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libgtk-vnc-1.0-0 python-appindicator python-gtk-vnc
Use ‘apt-get autoremove’ to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
qemu-keymaps
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gir1.2-gtk-vnc-2.0 gir1.2-libvirt-glib-1.0 gir1.2-spice-client-glib-2.0
gir1.2-spice-client-gtk-3.0 libvirt-glib-1.0-0 python-ipaddr qemu qemu-user
qemu-user-binfmt
The following packages will be upgraded:
libcgmanager0 libcgmanager0:i386 libvirt-bin libvirt0 python-libvirt
qemu-system qemu-system-arm qemu-system-common qemu-system-mips
qemu-system-misc qemu-system-ppc qemu-system-sparc qemu-system-x86
qemu-utils virt-manager virtinst
16 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 32.4 MB of archives.
After this operation, 70.9 MB of additional disk space will be used.

KVM/QEMU USB 3.0 Passthrough Update

Posted by on September 1, 2014 No comments

Installed onto a sacrificial lamb machine…

Created a linux guest (both host and guest are Ubuntu 14.04 trusty)

using

-device nec-usb-xhci,id=xhci \
-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5500

seemed to work with a custom compiled qemu on the Linux Guest

I found a virtualization ppa that I also tested at https://launchpad.net/~jacob/+archive/ubuntu/virtualisation
It is credited to Jacob Zimmermann, but I’m not sure if this is a personal project of his (or something more official). I added it on my test system and things worked well (including virtual manager). Not sure I’m comfortably relying on it for anything production wise, but it was darned handy for testing! (So thank you Jacob Zimmermann whoever you are!)

Since I am sure I had tried this recipe with my previous Windows 7 guest, I am going back to revisit it and see if I can make it work with different Windows drivers. Maybe I’ve been fighting an issue on the client side rather than with qemu…

Qemu 2.1 USB 3.0 PassThrough Fails (Hall of Shame) Ubuntu 14.04 Windows 7 Guest

Posted by on August 29, 2014 No comments

I guess I just need to suck it up and setup a Linux guest to see what (if any) parameters work and to rule out driver issues on the guest…

Windows 7 guest drivers from here: http://www.driverscape.com/manufacturers/renesas/usb  (NEC 3.0 Controller)

Using Ubuntu 14.04 with a custom complied qemu 2.1 with all the defaults (except PREFIX=/opt/qemu)

With this (uncommented part),

I get:

qemu-system-x86_64: hw/usb/hcd-xhci.c:896: xhci_events_update: Assertion `intr->er_full’ failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

also from dmesg:

[16948.896976] usb 4-4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd
[16948.914304] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff88023580f600

Tail end of qemu invocation shell script (showing previous ideas).

-device nec-usb-xhci,id=xhci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x14.0 \
-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,hostbus=4,hostport=10
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100
#below changes everytime I remove/reinsert drive
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,hostbus=3,hostport=11
#below failed with core dump usb_handle_packet assertion failed
#-device usb-host,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100

#vfio-bind 0000:00:14.0
#-device vfio-pci,host=14:00.0,bus=pcie.0
#-device usb-storage,bus=xhci.4,port=2
#-device usb-host,vendorid=0x0480,productid=0x200

-device nec-usb-xhci,id=xhci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x14.0 \
-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,hostbus=4,hostport=10
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100
#below changes everytime I remove/reinsert drive
#-device usb-host,bus=xhci.0,hostbus=3,hostport=11
#below failed with core dump usb_handle_packet assertion failed
#-device usb-host,vendorid=0x13fe,productid=0x5100

#vfio-bind 0000:00:14.0
#-device vfio-pci,host=14:00.0,bus=pcie.0
#-device usb-storage,bus=xhci.4,port=2
#-device usb-host,vendorid=0x0480,productid=0x200

Next steps, maybe I should try this with a Linux guest to test the parameters and rule out driver issues?

QEMU/KVM Startup Script

Posted by on August 19, 2014 No comments

Right now I’m running this with root privileges for the bridged network adapter.  I really need to find a better, cleaner way to do this…

#!/bin/sh
export QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=alsa
DISKIMG=/export/vm/win7old.qcow2
APPIMG=~/vm/apps.qcow2
VIRTIMG=/export/vm/virtio-win-0.1-81.iso
#CZ=~/vm/clonezilla-live.iso
CZ=~/vm/win7-64.iso
qemu-system-x86_64 –enable-kvm -drive file=${DISKIMG},if=virtio -m 8192 \
-device virtio-net,netdev=tunnel -netdev tap,id=tunnel,ifname=vnet0 \
-drive file=${VIRTIMG},index=3,media=cdrom \
-cdrom ${CZ} \
-rtc base=localtime,clock=host -smp cores=8 \
-drive file=${APPIMG},if=virtio \
-no-quit -no-frame \
-usbdevice tablet -soundhw all -cpu host -vga vmware
#-usb -device usb-host,hostbus=1,hostaddr=6
# Last part was working for USB pass through — disabled for now, slow?