[Spice-devel] cannot boot from virtio / no -qxl option

[Gerd Hoffmann]

>>> -when the disk is set to "virtio", I can install F13, but boot fails
>>> (at bios stage). When I set it to IDE then, it starts OK
>>
>> Upstream qemu simply doesn't support that (yet).
>
> I'm quite surprised, I have others vms (running with "normal" qemu from virt-preview repo for F13), that boot without problem, and I think their main disk is virtio... I'm not sure however and can't check this right now... (and it's more likely that you are right...)
> Anyway the easiest solution would be to have a 500Mb/1Gb disk for /boot (+grub), IDE, and everything else on a virtio disk I imagine.

Well, there is upstream qemu and there is qemu-kvm which carries 
additional patches (including extboot which handles booting from 
virtio).  fedora ships qemu-kvm ...

>>> -when I use "-vga qxl", f13 loads the non-graphical part (blue
>>> progress bar), but X doesn't start. Instead, I just get a blinking
>>> cursor at the top left corner...
>>
>> Try installing xorg-x11-drv-qxl.
>
> I did'nt mentionned that I did install it, and, instead of being still, the cursor was just blinking...
> What I need to do now is set up the network services, connect by ssh to the guest when it is locked at this stage, and have a look at its X's log files.
> However, my last "yum update" failed (network got broken in the middle, and I was doing it remotely, which was not a good idea), so I'm afraid I'll have to set up the whole guest again. I'll do that with the 1Gb IDE boot disk and tell you the results...

Oh, right, this is unstable.  I never actually tried X11 with this, only 
windows guests.  The qxl device is *not* compatible with older spice qxl 
devices, which is likely the reason why it fails.  We plan to fix this 
(so the new qxl device can handle guests with old qxl drivers just 
fine), but it doesn't work yet.

Not sure whenever some qxl x11 driver for unstable exists somewhere?

> Ok, and I think  that, if I want multiple qxl devices, I just have to use it several times, just like any other video device!

Well, almost.  Secondary qxl devices are added via "-device qxl".

cheers,
   Gerd