Imported VM Starts but Does Not Initialize the Display

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi Yikes! If you're spooked by this error, then what does this mean for me?

By the way, this very VM imported and started up without any issues on a physical XCP-ng host. This issue seems to be happening in a nested virtualization setting - where XCP-ng is the nested hypervisor (a guest of VMware Workstation Pro).

manilx

@kagbasi-ngc Don't do nesting! It's not to be trusted even when it seems to work.

kagbasi-ngc

@manilx Yeah, not doing it in production, just in a test environment. Plus I only did it because I actually found a write-up by the Vates team on how to get it done, which confirmed to me that while they don't recommend it for production, they understand that it has some merit in a testing environment and want to see it working.

That said, I definitely hear your admonition and would never do it in a production setting.

stormi

I'm not spooked, I just think it's the relevant error message we need to understand :).

Since this is a test pool, could you make it use the debug version of OVMF?

ln -sf OVMF-debug.fd /usr/share/edk2/OVMF.fd

Then attempt to start the VM again, and get /var/log/daemon.log and /var/log/xensource.log once again.

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi Glad you're not spooked....

I'll enable the debug mode as you'd instructed and grab the logs for you shortly.

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi Hi there, as requested, here are the two logs:

I started the VM at timestamp Dec 13 13:54:59 and stopped it at Dec 13 13:55:59.

Now, is deleting the symbolic link created above all that is necessary to reverse the debug mode?

Mefosheez

@stormi @kagbasi-ngc I have this same error in a separate thread, however, there is no nesting involved. from my limited knowledge, it seems like xcp is not seeing the available memory resources during boot and fails. if I migrate a running VM to the same host that gives me this error, it will operate as expected. but, after reboot... failure to launch.

https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/10083/uefi-guests-not-loading-console?_=1734014269146

@olivierlambert Thanks for your help so far.

stormi

@kagbasi-ngc Looks like we missed something, as the log indicates it loaded OVMF-release.fd:

Dec 13 13:54:59 VMH01 xenguest-2-build[8345]: Loaded OVMF from /usr/share/edk2/OVMF-release.fd

We'll come back to you with a better test procedure.

For now I just have a quick and dirty one, consisting in overwriting the release file with the debug one:

cp /usr/share/edk2/OVMF-debug.fd /usr/share/edk2/OVMF-release.fd

You can revert this change with yum reinstall edk2.

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi Sorry for the delayed reply. I did as you requested, and below are the resulting log files. I started the VM at timestamp Dec 17 14:43:34 and stopped it about 2 minutes later.

If I can be of assistance, don't hesitate to ask please. Thank you.

stormi

@kagbasi-ngc @Mefosheez We're trying to find developer time to diagnose the cause, but it's not the best time of the year, so I can't promise anything on delays.

stormi

@kagbasi-ngc Does your VM have a vTPM? If so, could you try without?

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi No worries at all, I understand.

kagbasi-ngc

@stormi Yes it does. I just deleted the VTPM and tried starting it, but no success. Still the same issue - can't initialize the display.

I also disabled Secure Boot, and got the same results.

Mefosheez

@stormi thanks for the feedback. no rush here. just let me know if I can help.