kvm-spice no video in 12.04

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting James Crow (james at ultratans.com):
> On 04/18/2012 04:42 PM, Serge Hallyn wrote:
> >Quoting James Crow (james at ultratans.com):
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >>I posted on the Ubuntu-User list, but received no helpful replies.
> >>
> >>I have a 12.04 amd64 desktop install that I am trying to use
> >>kvm-spice to run a virtual Windows install. kvm is working fine and
> >>I have a regular vnc guest (Windows XP) that is running. I tried to
> >>create a new guest using kvm-spice as the hypervisor. I used an iso
> >>image and allocated a 40GB image file. Once the image was created,
> >>the guest shows as running, but I have no video in either the
> >>Virtual Machine Manager or connecting with spicy.
> >>
> >>Does anyone have a working kvm-spice install on 12.04?
> >I've used it, yes.  It does have problems, which is why it remains
> >a tech preview.  (There are also concerns about where the package is
> >heading.)  Make sure that you've added '-enable-kvm' to the arguments or
> >it'll run unaccelerated...  The guest must support qxl.  But the most
> >annoying thing has been that for instance grub screens aren't visible.
> >
> >I've had working ubuntu+unity, kubuntu, and fedora installs under
> >kvm-spice.  Sometimes when grub decides it doesn't want to boot
> >until I hit return, I just get a blank screen and I have to boot with
> >-vnc to get a clean boot.
> >
> >Have you installed the SPICE client binaries in the windows guest?
> >See 'Windows client' under http://spice-space.org/download.html
> >(linking to http://spice-space.org/download/binaries/spice-client-win32-0.6.3.zip )
> >Perhaps you can boot with vnc, run the spicec.exe in there, and then
> >boot with spice?  I don't know...  haven't yet had a chance to try.
> >
> >-serge
> Serge,
> 
> Thanks for the note. The problem with spice/qxl is that I get
> absolutely no video output. No BIOS, nothing. It is hard to tell if
> the guest is even booting. I cloned a working 10.04 guest (server no
> X) that boots to a login in a couple of seconds. I tried to ping its
> statically assigned IP but it seemed to never boot. With no video
> output it is hard to tell if the guest did boot.

For what it's worth, I took an existing ubuntu server image (12.04
I believe) and booted it with

kvm-spice -drive file=preciseserv1.img,if=virtio,cache=none,index=0 \
  -vga qxl -spice disable-ticketing,port=5930 -m 2048 -redir tcp:2222::22

when I did 'spicy -h localhost -p 5930' I got a blank screen.  But
I could ssh in using 'ssh -p 2222 localhost'.  So the host did come
up.  I don't have a lucid guest handy - it's not impossible that it
somehow balks and refuses to boot.  But like I say when I've had that
happen with precise guests, then when I boot through vnc i find that
grub is waiting for input (because of a prior unclean shutdown).

I can also still boot a ubuntu precise desktop iso with spice.

> -enable-kvm is one of the arguments passed to kvm-spice.
> 
> I guess my next attempt should be with a working Windows guest. I
> will install the spice client libs with vnc and then convert.
> 
> Thank you,
> James Crow

-serge