[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#783901: Bug#783901: libvirt-daemon: libvirtd does not recognize Xen guests

[Guido Günther]

retitle 783901 libvirtd does not recognize Xen guests managed via /usr/sbin/xl

Hi,
On Fri, May 08, 2015 at 11:55:28AM -0700, Gerald Turner wrote:
> Control: severity -1 wishlist
> 
> On Fri, May 08 2015, Guido Günther wrote:
> > On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 12:51:37PM -0700, Gerald Turner wrote:
> > [..snip..]
> >>   * 1.2.12: Jan 27 2015
> >>       libxl: Add support for parsing/formating Xen XL config (Kiarie Kahurani)
> >>       Introduce support for parsing/formatting Xen xl config format (Jim Fehlig)
> >
> > We could cherry pick those to our stable release.
> 
> Nice!  However unless somebody else comes along and has the same
> expectations that I had (i.e. libvirt recognizing Xen guests with little
> or no configuration), I wouldn't put any effort into this.

Could you attach a configuration to this bug that shows he conversion
errors. I'll try to get this fixed so we ease the migration. That said
there are lots of libxl changes in newer libvirt so running a backported
1.2.15 might make more sense.

> 
> >> After correcting the domain XML, and restarting libvirtd once more,
> >> things start progressing:
> >>
> >>   # virsh -c xen:/// list --all
> >>    Id    Name                           State
> >>   ----------------------------------------------------
> >>    -     host1                          shut off
> >>
> >> … however “shut off” is incorrect.
> >
> > Stupid question but did you start the domain via virsh beforehand? If
> > so, is there anything interesting in the daemon log? AFAIK
> > configurations are now managed entierly via /etc/libvirt/libxl/ .
> 
> Not stupid because that's part of the point I've subtly been trying to
> make - I'm sticking with domU's started by /etc/init.d/xendomains and
> /usr/sbin/xl, the "Xen way".  For four years during squeeze and wheezy,

I just wanted to make sure we have this documented straight: libxl
managed xen domains aren't picked up by /usr/sbin/xl and vice versa.

> I had dropped in munin-libvirt-plugins and libvirt-bin (0.8.3 and
> 0.9.12) for the sole purpose of monitoring the domU's memory/cpu/io.
> This worked without any configuration other than specifying "uri
> xen:///" in the munin-node plugin configuration.  During the
> "heartbleed" panic, after hastily reacting to the output of
> checkrestart, I accidently discovered that "service libvirt-guests
> restart" actually handles restarts of these "unmanaged" domU's.
> Fantastic!  Consequently I've been telling sysadmin colleagues that
> libvirt is great because it integrates non-intrusively and can handle
> heterogeneous VM environments.

It's bad that this isn't true for Jessie anymore but looking at the
uptream list it seems most distros are switching over to libvirt managed
xen domains.

> Sorry - I was too quick to react after upgrading to jessie and opening
> this bug.  FWICT libvirt+Xen/xl no longer supports this "unmanaged"

I think the bug is valid and we should leave it open since others might
stomp on it as well.

Cheers,
 -- Guido
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