[libvirt] Crash state and QEMU

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 01:26:39PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> As far as I can tell, if QEMU exits abruptly or with a non-zero
> status code, libvirt treats this as a domain destruction given no
> real indication to the user that something bad happened.

libvirtd raises an event.  There is (was?) a "reason" argument
(eg. "reason" == "watchdog fired").  I've a vague recollection this
was discussed but never added.  I can't find it in the code right now,
but I might be looking for the wrong thing ...

> But libvirt does have a crashed state for domains, it's just not
> used for QEMU guests.

I'll just make a historical note that the crashed state corresponded
to a state in Xen.  Essentially the states in libvirt are directly
mapped to the ones listed in the Xen xm man page here:

http://linux.die.net/man/1/xm

> I was wondering how intention of a design decision this was.  Right
> now there's no good way for a management tool to detect a crashed
> guest/QEMU.  Is there something I'm overlooking?

Rich.

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