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forcing stopping a windows VM results in being unable to restart the VM...

JustinChase

By JustinChase
in VM Engine (KVM)

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JustinChase Rising Star

JustinChase

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...unless/until I reboot the whole server.

 

If I force stop (or the VM crashes) a VM, then try to start another VM (stop windows8, start windows10), the whole server becomes unresponsive, and must be hard booted to recover.

 

How can I help diagnose this problem, so I/we can find a resolution?  Once I have to hard boot, all logs are lost.

 

I've tried just pressing the power button, to force it to shutdown using powerdown, but it doesn't work.  A long press of the power button is the only option :(

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bungee91 Enthusiast

bungee91

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...unless/until I reboot the whole server.

 

If I force stop (or the VM crashes) a VM, then try to start another VM (stop windows8, start windows10), the whole server becomes unresponsive, and must be hard booted to recover.

 

How can I help diagnose this problem, so I/we can find a resolution?  Once I have to hard boot, all logs are lost.

 

I've tried just pressing the power button, to force it to shutdown using powerdown, but it doesn't work.  A long press of the power button is the only option :(

 

Are you passing through a GPU to this VM?

If so: In my testing if you force stop a VM with a GPU, it seems the GPU gets (for lack of better word) "stuck" and will not come back up until a power cycle.

I suppose if the GPU properly supports function level reset (FLR), then maybe it would work regardless, not certain.

However given a willing GPU (some suck, we know this), a successful power down and reboot work as expected, even allowing the GPU to move to another VM when the previous one was shutdown.

 

I would like to say that a non pass-through (VNC only) VM doesn't have this issue, however I don't know that I've ever had to force stop it, as it is pretty much rock-solid and have never had to resort to this.

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JustinChase Rising Star

JustinChase

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yeah, I'm passing an nVidia 550Ti to the VM's in question.

 

Before the newer versions of unRAID, with the built-in VM manager, I'm pretty sure this worked okay (killing the VM then restarting it).

 

I updated the machine type with the new VM manager, and I'm guessing this is the problem now.

 

I'll probably order a new video card soon, and hopefully this will resolve my issues.

 

The good news is that I don't need to kill the VM very often, so this is a rare occurrence.

 

Thanks.

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bungee91 Enthusiast

bungee91

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I take back my comment, and now realize it is all about having a "friendly" card!!  ;D

 

I happen to have a test system setup right now to go through my cards, and figure out what they can/can't do.

This is perfect because I have locked this thing up completely (entire server frozen) at least 40 times now!...LOL

 

Anyhow one of the cards I'm testing is from my main PC an R7 260X, and it works flawlessly in this use case!

I did this testing specifically for you to know if it is just the crappy GPU's I've had experience with, or completely dependent on having one that does this whole vt-d thing well.

 

(Of note, this card for whatever reason will not boot OE in SeaBIOS, but works under OVMF)

I may test this same type of thing when my other GT 720 gets here, but I'm pretty sure it will be as compatible as this 260X from the testing that I've done with the one in the server now.

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JustinChase Rising Star

JustinChase

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INteresting; thanks for reporting your findings.

 

I just ordered this new MSI GT720 tonight for about $35 after rebate.

 

I'm currently running my VM as a pc-q35-2.3 machine type, but was running as a i440fx machine type previously (I think).  I'm almost certain that the i440fx allowed me to force kill the VM and restart it, but I'm not positive.

 

I only changed to pc-q as I thought it was more robust.  Perhaps that's the mistake I made, and I need to go back.

 

I'm going to update the VM to windows 10 soon, so I'll maybe wait until I'm ready to do that, and have the new video card and try to tackle this all at once.

 

however, even when i get the new video card working, I'll still have to use the 550ti, as I'm adding another TV to run off this system, so I'll probably have to have 2 VM's running.

 

Anyway, I'll be very interested to hear what you recommend for the GT720 in a windows VM situation (bios, machine type, etc)

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bungee91 Enthusiast

bungee91

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That is the exact same card I have in my server now that I was so impressed with I wrote that thread, I expect (however I'm not liable here) that you'll have a great experience with it.

Since I have a test server currently, and since I could care less what happens to the testing VM, I'll plan to switch it to Q35, and retest to find out if that changes anything... 

 

Will let you know when I get a chance to look into it.

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bungee91 Enthusiast

bungee91

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I'm currently running my VM as a pc-q35-2.3 machine type, but was running as a i440fx machine type previously (I think).  I'm almost certain that the i440fx allowed me to force kill the VM and restart it, but I'm not positive.

 

Anyway, I'll be very interested to hear what you recommend for the GT720 in a windows VM situation (bios, machine type, etc)

 

Made no difference worked perfectly multiple times..

Switched back to i440fx, booted, rebooted... all good!  8)

VM wasn't happy to have the power "pulled" from it, but the video card didn't give a shit.

 

Did this testing on my other GT 720, most recent drivers (published July 29th).

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