[virt-tools-list] virt-what detection on Citrix XenServer 5.5

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 03:24:58PM +0100, Mark Phillips wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Just been recommended to look at virt-what by Dom Cleal, after struggling with
> Facter/Puppet.
> 
> I've a RHEL (well, CentOS) 5.5 virtual running on Citrix XenServer 5.5.0 -
> virt-what reports the virtual as being on hyperv though:
> 
> [root at jusbeta virt-what]# PATH=.:$PATH ./virt-what
> hyperv
> [root at jusbeta virt-what]# ./virt-what-cpuid-helper 
> Microsoft Hv
> [root at jusbeta virt-what]# dmidecode | egrep '(Vendor|Manufact|Product)'
>         Vendor: Xen
>         Manufacturer: Xen
>         Product Name: HVM domU
>         Manufacturer: Xen
>         Manufacturer: AMD
> 
> I can gather it's down to virt-what-cpuid-helper that this is the discovery,
> but not being a C coder I don't know why - I guess you guys probably do. 
> 
> If there's anything else I can provide that will help resolve this, please let
> me know.

This is probably an example of:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=671510

One day I mean to set up a Citrix Xen host so I can try to reproduce
this bug.

As Dan said, the general issue is that Citrix Xen advertises itself as
HyperV ("Viridian extensions").  Unfortunately the documentation for
the virt leaf from CPUID is very poor and contradictory, so I was not
able to determine whether virt-what-cpuid-helper is doing the right
thing or not.  Possibly not.

You might also wish to try upstream virt-what from git, which may be
better.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into Xen guests.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v