[GUIDE] Virtualizing unRAID in KVM on openSUSE 13.1 (64Bit) <--- Completed 12/19


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In the third part of the guide, step #5 you need to select the CPU Model (in your example it was Opteron_G5). Don't know if this is important.

 

That is not important.

 

Related to the Bootloader options, I have added that line you mentioned above and left the rest of the options as it is. Let's see...

 

In /etc/default you should see a grub file that you can edit and see if it add the immou option to the kernel line.

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I have the same errors as tr0910 and kegler and was trying to edit the bootloader. These are the optional parameter:

resume=/dev/system/swap splash=silent quiet showopts

 

...and here the Failsafe-Parameter:

showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe

 

Somewhere in Yast under bootloader there is an EASY way to add kernel options to grub without actually editing the grub.cfg itself.

 

Grumpy, Edgar yes it is easy to do.  It just wasn't obvious to me at first and it was getting very late in the day.  I just wanted to get a post out on the problem to tr0910 just to let him know he was not the only one having this issue.

 

I added "intel_iommu= on" to the "Optional Kernel Command Line Parameter" line.

 

resume=/dev/system/swap splash=silent quiet showopts intel_iommu=on

 

Clicked Ok twice to exit and save, then rebooted the system.  I started up the unRAID vm and the error message is now gone.  unRAID vm is now working.  Problem solved.  Thanks to all.

 

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Grumpy, Edgar yes it is easy to do.  It just wasn't obvious to me at first and it was getting very late in the day.  I just wanted to get a post out on the problem to tr0910 just to let him know he was not the only one having this issue.

 

I added "intel_iommu= on" to the "Optional Kernel Command Line Parameter" line.

 

resume=/dev/system/swap splash=silent quiet showopts intel_iommu=on

 

Clicked Ok twice to exit and save, then rebooted the system.  I started up the unRAID vm and the error message is now gone.  unRAID vm is now working.  Problem solved.  Thanks to all.

 

Thanks for posting back that it worked.

 

I will update the guide later today and make a note that people with Intel's need to add that.

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Yes, I was successful as well, but right after manually changing grub file I was silly enough to delete the Boot Option "opensuse" in the BIOS settings.  :o

 

It's a learning - will install once more....

 

As they say: "Been there, done that".  I fully expect to be re-installing this a number of times.  That's just a part of learning something new.

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Indeed  :D

 

I'm not 100% clear what the best partition setup is. I have a 256GB SSD, a small 150mb FAT partition is the necessary Boot partition when you select Btrfs. Should I have a separate Home partition and activate LVM? What about the EXT4 partition?

 

Grumpy, this is not 100% clear for a newbie as the description and the screen captures are different. I think that you want us to use Btrfs and using LVM right? Just asking .....  anyhow great help via your guide  :D

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Thanks for posting back that it worked.

 

I will update the guide later today and make a note that people with Intel's need to add that.

 

This problem was first posted when I was using an AMD system.  I finally was able to shut the production unraid down and test on Intel Xeon on Supermicro X9 SCM hardware.  The exact same problem on both.  So this may be required on AMD too....

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This problem was first posted when I was using an AMD system.  I finally was able to shut the production unraid down and test on Intel Xeon on Supermicro X9 SCM hardware.  The exact same problem on both.  So this may be required on AMD too....

 

Great job to kegler and tr0910 for troubleshooting and finding the solution.

 

I only have 4 PCs to test stuff on and I do not have a Supermicro Motherboard.

 

Looks like people with Supermicro's need to add the following to the bootloader:

 

Intel CPU

 

intel_iommu

 

AMD CPU

 

iommu=pt iommu=1

 

I will update the guide later this evening,

 

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So I decided to tackle this guy, and I ran into an issue that I'm not sure how to address.  This happened momentarily after clicking begin installation on the unraid virtual server.

 

Here is a screen grab of the error:

 

epeZdk0.png

 

The reason you see two unraid servers is that I got the same error with the first, wondered if I screwed something up so I tried it a second time (I couldn't figure out how to kill off the first one).

 

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

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The reason you see two unraid servers is that I got the same error with the first, wondered if I screwed something up so I tried it a second time (I couldn't figure out how to kill off the first one).

 

I have no clue. Installed openSUSE and unRAID in a VM probably 20 times or more on 4 different PCs testing it out.

 

Never got that error before.

 

I would go back to the guide and verify that you set up libvirt correctly, your user was added to the libvirt group, etc.

 

When you verify that, reset the PC and try again but without passing through anything to the unRAID VM to see if it works.

 

Keep updating the thread and I will continue to offer suggestions / help.

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Extremely minor comment but I'll make in the interests of making it completely obvious, in step 10 you say

 

Edit the unRAID VM and add the PCI Passthrough Devices.

 

I think it is worth saying instead something like

 

Select the VM in virt-manager, click open.

In the new window, click "details" and then "add hardware".

Go to the pci host device(s) option and choose the controller(s) to passthrough

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The reason you see two unraid servers is that I got the same error with the first, wondered if I screwed something up so I tried it a second time (I couldn't figure out how to kill off the first one).

 

I have no clue. Installed openSUSE and unRAID in a VM probably 20 times or more on 4 different PCs testing it out.

 

Never got that error before.

 

I would go back to the guide and verify that you set up libvirt correctly, your user was added to the libvirt group, etc.

 

When you verify that, reset the PC and try again but without passing through anything to the unRAID VM to see if it works.

 

Keep updating the thread and I will continue to offer suggestions / help.

 

Not sure if it was the reboot, or editing the bootloader (I have a supermicro motherboard with an intel processor) but it worked!  Proceeding with the next step!

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Hi Grumpy,

 

First of all, thank you very much for your hard work on this! It looks pretty exciting!

 

Secondly, please let me ask a couple of questions:

1. I am a bit confused about the required HW. It's clear that vt-d is needed for pass through, but reading the topic I read out that IOMMU is a must have as well? If this is the case, I believe this close out all core2 CPUs what are otherwise vt-d capable. At least the link you shared tells that only ivy sandy and Nehalem CPUs support IOMMU. Is this understanding correct?

2. Did you experiment with UPS integration into this solution? If yes, do you have solution for the UPS shutting gracefully down everything if required?

3. Do you have some rough number for performance comparison with bare metal?

 

Thank you very much for your feedback in advance.

 

Edit: khm, reading a bit more seems like vt-d=IOMMU? Phew...

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Secondly, please let me ask a couple of questions:

1. I am a bit confused about the required HW. It's clear that vt-d is needed for pass through, but reading the topic I read out that IOMMU is a must have as well?

 

This has always been the case with PCI passthrough. A CPU / Motherboard that does VT-D. You also have to have a motherboard that supports IOMMU. In the first page on my thread, you can see the links I have which goes into more detail and shows a list of known hardware that works.

 

If this is the case, I believe this close out all core2 CPUs what are otherwise vt-d capable. At least the link you shared tells that only ivy sandy and Nehalem CPUs support IOMMU. Is this understanding correct?

 

There are a TON of intel CPUs that do not do VT-D. You would have to search Intel for your chip and see if it has VT-D support.

 

2. Did you experiment with UPS integration into this solution? If yes, do you have solution for the UPS shutting gracefully down everything if required?

 

UPS and Linux play very well nice together. Just a matter of setting up your UPS to talk with Linux either serial or USB.

 

3. Do you have some rough number for performance comparison with bare metal?

 

I will let others speak to that. I tweaked the unRAID kernel for myself so mine was faster than bare metal.

 

Speed wise Xen, KVM and ESXi are about the same.

 

Edit: khm, reading a bit more seems like vt-d=IOMMU? Phew...

 

No exactly and the bios of the motherboard matters too. I had one that the default bios the IOMMU didn't work but when I updated it, it worked.

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Ok, thanks, I will figure the HW support. I was just wondering that until it's very obvious that some core2 CPU support vt-d, say the e8400, it is not so certain if there is ANY LGA 775 motherboard with IOMMU support to house them. Anyway, as said I will sort this out.

 

Back to the ups question: I think it is just the first step the ups talks to Linux, but I suppose there are additional configuration required for KVM to shut down the VMs as well, before shutting down the host, no?

 

...and a bonus question. Say I have a tv tuner card to pass through. Does this card itself need to support pass through as we'll, or once pass through works on the hypervisor level, will this surely work?

 

Edit: what CPU are you using with your asrock extreme and/ or what would be the minimum you would recommend?

 

Thanks again!

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So I'm past getting the unraid bootmenu splash screen.  I added the PCI card and USB Host 2 (which correlates to the internal USB port) as passthrough devices to the virtual machine.  I then rebooted OpenSUSE, went back to the virtual machine manager, and as soon as I hit "start", the virtual machine manager closes, I lose my icons on the openSUSE desktop and then I can't even start anything because of...

 

'Failed to execuse hild process "/usr/bin/xdg-su" (No such file or directory)'

 

Example of no icons:

vGDEZFf.png

 

Error message when I try to start YaST:

3nWccsN.png

 

Suggestions?

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OK, I'm at Step 9 of "Installing unRAID in a VM," and I have grumpy's "starter" unRAID.vhd running. There are a couple of hiccups with the vhd that I encountered and I understand it could be something I missed in the guide. When the vhd is booting the message, "waiting for /dev/disk/by-label/UNRAID" echoes for 30 seconds or so but finally goes away and we get a logon prompt. Also, when this vhd running I can't connect to unRAID's webGUI and the vhd will not gracefully power down. Hopefully this is not a big deal, maybe it's by design. However, I can telnet into the virtual unRAID server.

 

It is looking for an unRAID USB Flash Drive. If it doesn't find it, the unRAID WebGUI is not going to work, telnet, etc.

 

Format and make a new unRAID USB Flash Drive per the instructions on this site and try starting the VM again. If successful, you shouldn't see the waiting for /dev/disk/by-lable/UNRAID and the webGUI should work.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  You are simply testing if your CPU, Motherboard, USB Controller, sata controller, openSUSE, your unRAID VM, etc. is set up correctly.

 

Do not have your unRAID drives hooked up or powered on or use your Original unRAID USB Flash Drive!

I'm happy to report success with USB-passthrough on my test system  (Intel DQ45CB (LGA775) mobo + Core2 Quad Q9300 processor + 6gB DDR2). I was just about ready to throw in the towel, but I discovered the cheapie UNRAID flash drive I had been using was the source of my trouble. I stumbled onto this trying to test my UNRAID flash drive in another VM build in KVM. After building on an 8GB Toshiba flash drive I got the test system working  :)

 

In tinkering around with PCI-passthrough I get the error member TR0910 pointed out and I will start testing the bootloader modification that has been posted.

 

Back to this motherboard, DQ45CB, I'm currently using the latest BIOS ver. 133.

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Rewent through the guide, this time installed the KDE destop environment to minimize the differentiation from the guide that I was making... got to the same point (with no drives attached, the unraid boot menu showed up, passed through PCIe controller and USB controller, rebooted, plugged all drives and USB drive back in and attempt to start the server only to reach an error.

 

The error I received was:

 

Error starting domain: failed to create logfile /var/log/libvirt/qemu/unRAID.log: No such file or directory. 

 

As soon as the error pops up, my IMPI window starts going nuts and I'm pretty much shut out of my system from then on.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Ogi

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Rewent through the guide, this time installed the KDE destop environment to minimize the differentiation from the guide that I was making... got to the same point (with no drives attached, the unraid boot menu showed up, passed through PCIe controller and USB controller, rebooted, plugged all drives and USB drive back in and attempt to start the server only to reach an error.

 

The error I received was:

 

Error starting domain: failed to create logfile /var/log/libvirt/qemu/unRAID.log: No such file or directory. 

 

As soon as the error pops up, my IMPI window starts going nuts and I'm pretty much shut out of my system from then on.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Ogi

 

From a previous post you are using a Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard and Xeon 1230 CPU? 

 

I have not been using IMPI at this time for this testing.  I have a vga monitor connected directly to the motherboard.  I would try eliminating IMPI as a source of your problems.  Connect up a mouse and keyboard too. 

 

You should be able to just reboot your system to try this without reloading everything again.  This would be the first step I would try.

 

Edit:  I just tried using IMPI on my own system and everything works.  But I would still like to see what happens on your system using directly connected peripherals.

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That is exactly what I do. Fresh Install the use Clonezilla to make an image.

 

I PXE Boot in Clonezilla and back it up over NFS to an Backup Image Folder. It's very fast unless you have a lot of NTFS partitions.

 

I tried to use a liveCD and wasn't successful in sending either via NFS or via SMB.  Both ways failed in connecting to the unRaid server.

 

I connected via IP and provided Clonezilla with root login credentials.  Is this the way you did it?  Any other tricks?

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Recomendation: Prior to "1. Install openSUSE Updates", add a section instructing to configure the network cards using Yast if Firefox is unable to pull up his configured homepage - or move the update after the network configuration part using Yast and update to configure the network cards.

 

If my network card wasn't automatically configured, probaby the the same for others. I reached the Update step and stopped there until I figured out how to do it.

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Ok, thanks, I will figure the HW support. I was just wondering that until it's very obvious that some core2 CPU support vt-d, say the e8400, it is not so certain if there is ANY LGA 775 motherboard with IOMMU support to house them. Anyway, as said I will sort this out.

 

I'll try to tackle this part of your post since I have a couple of E8500 processors here and are fairly familiar with them. 

 

Yes these do have support for VT-d/VT-x.  And they can be had on Ebay for less than $30.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors

 

That said the big problem is finding a motherboard with virtualization support.  Only ones made that do, use the Intel Q35, Q45, X38 and X48 chipsets.  And they would be usable only if the board manufacturer enabled virtualization in the BIOS.  And some of these boards will require DDR2 memory instead of the current DDR3 memory.

 

Finding a usable board is going to be very hit and miss for this generation.  I would want to know of a success story from someone else before going out and buying one.  Even when the manufacture does claim support I would be skeptical without evidence to the contrary.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Core_2_chipsets

 

Since this is 6 year old technology these are long out of production.  Only source will be via Ebay.  Unless you have the processor and ample memory laying around and just need the motherboard, this is not a path I would choose.  At best it would only be usable as a test bed IMO.  You would be better served with a more recent generation.

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