Windows XP live migration fails (hangs + BSOD)

Roberto

New Member
Apr 19, 2010
5
0
1
Rome, Italy
Good morning to everybody.
I've just started testing Proxmox VE to leave Citrix XenServer 5.5

VMs convertion from Xen to Proxmox is almost "ok" and I already converted several Windows VMs (almost Windows XP Pro and only one Win2k3 Server R2).

This morning I set up a second node and a cluster.
Everything seems ok but if I try an online migration of a Windows XP vm, the vm migrates from one node to another but after the migration it is completely freezed (CPU gauge on the web admin shows 104%); after some minutes it reboots with a BSOD complaining about ACPI support in the bios (??).

Software details:
Proxmox brand new install plus updates to kernel 2.6.32 with KSM enabled as explained at http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_VE_Kernel#How_to_install_2.6.32.

Hardware details (servers are identical):
HPProLiant DL360 G5:
2x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz (fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall lm constant_tsc pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx cid cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm tpr_shadow)
RAM:10GB

Shared storage via NFS share.

BSOD contents:
The BIOS in this system is not fully ACPI complient. please contact your vendor or visit http://www.hardware.update.com for an updated BIOS. If you are unable to obtain an updated BIOS or the latest BIOS supplied by your vendor is not ACPI complient, you can turn off ACPI mode during text mode setup. To do this, simply press F7 when you are prompted to install storage drivers. The system will not notify you that the f7 key was pressed it will silently disable ACPI and allow you to continue your installation.

*** STOP: 0x000000A5 (0x00000011, 0x00000007, 0xF7E11054, 0x20061109)



Googling a little bit lead me to Microsoft web site where it is explained that this error usually happens during Windows XP installation but, obviously, this is not the case because the machine was up and running smoothly.

Windows gets stucked in this BSOD loop until I stop the VM and start it again from Proxmox VE web interface.

Any help would be appreciated as I'm evaluating Proxmox to replace Citrix XenServer 5.5.

Thanks,
Roberto Cespa

P.S.: I attached my "cat /proc/cpuinfo" information for both servers. Seeking differences with "diff" only shows differences in bogomips calculations and small CPU clock diff.
 

Attachments

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tomorrow we plan to release a brand new 2.6.32 kernel with a newer KVM version (0.12.3) to the pvetest repository, pls test with this. instructions will be published in this forum as soon as the packages are uploaded.
 
Hi, Tom
Thank you for your prompt reply.

I would like to know if this update is stricltly related to this problem or if it is a more general update.

Best regards,
Roberto
 
general update from 0.11 to 0.12.3 and new kernel. we did not see any problem in live migration of winxp guests.
 
Just for more information: a fresh install of Windows XP Professional SP3, 20GB IDE drive, 1GB Ram does not migrate successfully from the secondary to the master, so this problem does not seem to be related to my conversion from Xen to KVM.

Master info:
pve-manager: 1.5-8 (pve-manager/1.5/4674)
running kernel: 2.6.32-1-pve
proxmox-ve-2.6.32: 1.5-4
pve-kernel-2.6.32-1-pve: 2.6.32-4
pve-kernel-2.6.18-2-pve: 2.6.18-5
qemu-server: 1.1-11
pve-firmware: 1.0-3
libpve-storage-perl: 1.0-10
vncterm: 0.9-2
vzctl: 3.0.23-1pve8
vzdump: 1.2-5
vzprocps: 2.0.11-1dso2
vzquota: 3.0.11-1
pve-qemu-kvm: 0.11.1-2
ksm-control-daemon: 1.0-3

Secondary info:
pve-manager: 1.5-8 (pve-manager/1.5/4674)
running kernel: 2.6.32-1-pve
proxmox-ve-2.6.32: 1.5-4
pve-kernel-2.6.32-1-pve: 2.6.32-4
pve-kernel-2.6.18-2-pve: 2.6.18-5
qemu-server: 1.1-11
pve-firmware: 1.0-3
libpve-storage-perl: 1.0-10
vncterm: 0.9-2
vzctl: 3.0.23-1pve8
vzdump: 1.2-5
vzprocps: 2.0.11-1dso2
vzquota: 3.0.11-1
pve-qemu-kvm: 0.11.1-2
ksm-control-daemon: 1.0-3

The logs do not show any kind of problem and the migration is reported as successfully finished.
I'll wait for the new kernel release in the pvetest repository.

Best regards,
Roberto
 
Already downloaded and installed on the secondary server.
Later this evening I'll install the same kernel also on the master.
I tried a migration test in this hybrid situation (new and old kernel) but it failed the same way.

Best regards,
Roberto
 
Unfortunately after upgrading both servers to the latest kernel I still have the same problem.
Live migration worked flawlessly only a couple of times on about twenty tests.
Sometimes the cpu usage goes up to 104% after migration and sometimes it's stuck to 0%.
The VM is freezed and does not respond to ping or to any other command, even if issued via the qm monitor.
I tried to search for similar problems on Google but the only forum post I found (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1452581) has no reply yet.
Rolling back to previous kernel version without KSM support is not an option because KSM is the main reason I'm leaving XenServer for KVM.

Is it possible to enable some debug features in the virtual machine to see what goes on before, during and after migration?

Any help, idea or suggestion would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Roberto
 
Is it possible to enable some debug features in the virtual machine to see what goes on before, during and after migration?

Any help, idea or suggestion would be appreciated.

If you really want to debug kvm, you need to download/compile and install the latest kvm sources (from git). Then try to reproduce the problem and report it to the kvm developement list, ...
 
Unfortunately after upgrading both servers to the latest kernel I still have the same problem.
Live migration worked flawlessly only a couple of times on about twenty tests.
Sometimes the cpu usage goes up to 104% after migration and sometimes it's stuck to 0%.
The VM is freezed and does not respond to ping or to any other command, even if issued via the qm monitor.
I tried to search for similar problems on Google but the only forum post I found (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1452581) has no reply yet.
Rolling back to previous kernel version without KSM support is not an option because KSM is the main reason I'm leaving XenServer for KVM.

Is it possible to enable some debug features in the virtual machine to see what goes on before, during and after migration?

Any help, idea or suggestion would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Roberto
Roberto, it seems similar to this one: http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/3530-Problems-with-Windows-live-migration-using-KVM
 

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