How do I run a stable Windows XP kvm guest on Ubuntu 10.04?
- by Jean-Paul Calderone
I have three Windows XP guests running on a recently upgraded 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 system. Occasionally (on the order of once every few days), one of the guests will become non-responsive and the kvm process on the host which is running that guest will start consuming 100% CPU. It will continue to do so until it is killed. When restarted, it will be fine for a while, and then the issue repeats.
The kvm command line used to run all three guests is this:
/usr/bin/kvm -S -M pc-0.12 -enable-kvm -m 1024 -smp 1 -name bigdog21vmxp1 \
-uuid ea47ff84-125b-16f7-9a4d-a6d0d8bab46a \
-chardev socket,id=monitor,path=/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/bigdog21vmxp1.monitor,server,nowait \
-monitor chardev:monitor \
-localtime \
-boot c \
-drive file=/var/lib/libvirt/images/windowsxp-1.qcow2,if=ide,index=0,boot=on,format=qcow2 \
-net nic,macaddr=54:52:00:02:06:0e,vlan=0,name=nic.0 \
-net tap,fd=58,vlan=0,name=tap.0 \
-chardev pty,id=serial0 \
-serial chardev:serial0 \
-parallel none \
-usb \
-usbdevice tablet \
-vnc 127.0.0.1:1 \
-k en-us \
-vga cirrus \
-soundhw es1370
Why do the systems misbehave this way sometimes? And what configuration can I change in order to fix it? Or, if the problem is due to a bug in kvm, what is the process for isolating a kvm failure so that the developers have a chance of fixing it?
