[libvirt] Virt-install Error on Centos 5.4 64bit and kvm

[Jiri Denemark]

> On the /var/log/libvirt/qemu/p3k0401.log:
> 
> LC_ALL=C PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin HOME=/
> /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -S -M rhel5.4.0 -m 1024 -smp 1 -name p3k0401
> -uuid 7658c102-0738-724c-40eb-e1c58b2c2369 -domid 3 -nographic -monitor
> pty -pidfile /var/run/libvirt/qemu//p3k0401.pid -no-reboot -boot c
> -kernel /var/lib/libvirt/boot/virtinst-vmlinuz.O_SOVo -initrd
> /var/lib/libvirt/boot/virtinst-initrd.img.0ba0Fp -append
> method=http://10.1.4.80  -drive
> file=//dev/VolGroup01/p3k0401logvol,if=ide,index=0,cache=none -net
> nic,macaddr=54:52:00:15:c4:50,vlan=0 -net
> tap,fd=16,script=,vlan=0,ifname=vnet0 -serial pty -parallel none -usb
> Supported machines are:
> pc Standard PC (alias of pc-0.12)
> pc-0.12 Standard PC (default)
> pc-0.11 Standard PC, qemu 0.11
> pc-0.10 Standard PC, qemu 0.10
> isapc ISA-only PC
> xenpv Xen Para-virtualized PC
> 
> 
> And my packages installed:
> 
> # rpm -qa | grep qemu
> qemu-0.12.4-1.el5.rf
  ^^^
This is your problem. You have an alternative qemu installed. By default,
libvirt will use rhel5.4.0 machine type, which is supported by
kvm-83-164.el5_5.12 but not supported by upstream qemu (you can see the
supported machine types in the log above).

So you have two options:
- either use /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm as the emulator
- or explicitly change machine type to something which is supported by
  /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 (e.g., pc-0.12)

You can do both in guest XML but I'm not sure if any of these can be done
using virt-install.

Another option is to use current upstream libvirt since it is able to
automatically detect supported machine types and doesn't try to use rhel5.4.0
if the emulator doesn't support it.

Jirka