[virt-tools-list] Problem creating vm's with virt-manager 0.7.0

[Joseph Shraibman]

On a CentOS 5.3 machine (with qemu 0.9.1, kvm-84) I had been using 
virt-manager 0.6.0 but had recently upgraded to 0.7.0 (I tried 0.8.0 but 
found that unusable). I also built a new virt-install 0.500.0. I'm not 
sure what I had before since there is no --version command to virt-install.

I created a new vm but when I tried to start it I got errors like this:

Unable to complete install 'libvirt.libvirtError internal error unable 
to start guest: qemu: unknown parameter 'fmt' in 
'file=/var/lib/libvirt/images/f11-test01.img,if=virtio,index=0,fmt='

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/local/share/virt-manager/virtManager/create.py", line 
1485, in do_install
     dom = guest.start_install(False, meter = meter)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/Guest.py", line 628, 
in start_install
     return self._do_install(consolecb, meter, removeOld, wait)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/Guest.py", line 726, 
in _do_install
     self.domain = self.conn.createLinux(install_xml, 0)
   File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 974, in 
createLinux
     if ret is None:raise libvirtError('virDomainCreateLinux() failed', 
conn=self)
libvirtError: internal error unable to start guest: qemu: unknown 
parameter 'fmt' in 
'file=/var/lib/libvirt/images/f11-test01.img,if=virtio,index=0,fmt='

I got similar errors if I just created the vm and tried to start it with 
virsh.  I solved the problem by removing the following from the 
/etc/libvirt/qemu/xxxx.xml file:

   <driver name='qemu'/>


I've also found that booting the new machines with an .iso in the the 
virtual hard drive resulted in machines that were crawling on startup. I 
tried with ubuntu and fedora live cd images. I had previously installed 
virtual machines by booting from .iso images so I don't know what the 
problem could be.  Those machines still start and run without problems. 
I never upgraded qemu or kvm, the only thing that changed was 
virt-manager.  I diff'ed xml files between the old and new vm's and 
besides the <driver> element the only thing different was <input 
type='tablet' bus='usb'/>.  I removed that but the vm's still crawl 
after booting the kernel and eventually stall.  Could this be 
virt-manager's fault somehow?