libvirt can't start kvm's after update

bookwood

Hi all,
I use since 2 years libvirt on my laptop. Yesterday I switched to systemd, because I had a udev systemd blocker. I detect in libvirt the systemd useflag and aktivate it global. It's my Laptop and I use KDE with the kde systemd profile.

When I start my KVM vm in libvirt:

PeeJay · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 2:25 am Post subject:

Have you got the tun module loaded? I had similar troubles recently which was caused by the tun module not being loaded for some reason.

bookwood · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:44 am Post subject:

The tun module is loaded and vhost-net also:

bookwood · Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:23 am Post subject:

The problem is systemd:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493246
Now I will switch my system back to the main profile and I will try to switch back to udev to get a stable system again.

I think its not a good idea to update productive Gentoo libvirt/kvm hosts at the moment, because you got a broken system.

bookwood · Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:56 pm Post subject:

I solved the problem and uninstall banshee and switch to the default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/kde profile. The package banshee forces the installation of the gnome-settings-daemon and the systemd. I uninstall banshee, gnome-settings-daemon and systemd. Every systemd dependency is gone and I could reinstall udev-208.

Qemu and libvirt running fine again.

miket · Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 2:29 pm Post subject:

It's a great thing that you found what pulled in systemd as a dependency and saw 1) you could live without it and 2) it would not be overly painful to go back to a systemd-free system. Congratulations for getting back to a running system.

Your experience highlights the most troublesome aspect of systemd: it is the product of a developer who is intent on the rapid rollout of machine-breaking features without regard for sufficient testing and who has managed to cajole most of the world onto his bandwagon. It is a dangerous mix for anyone trying to keep his or her machines running stably.

It is really unfortunate that so may interesting tools are tied to libgnome. Gnome, unlike KDE, has saddled itself with hard dependencies on systemd and friends. KDE, fortunately, is more modular. It has to be: it works on many systems, including OSX and Windows.

I see systemd as being especially problematic in Gentoo. Whereas the builders of binary distributions can freeze at one set of packages and be sure that all the packages at their respective versions play nicely, Gentoo keeps up with the reckless pace of systemd and introduces periodic mayhem because of it.

Oh well, I'm afraid I'll rain on the parade a bit more. When I started three years ago or so with the idea of taking advantage of virtualization with KVM, I took a pretty good look at libvirt. I decided that though it looked nice, it just had too much in the way of dependencies. No libvirt for me. I worked out the networking according to the wiki and made scripts to give me my qemu command lines. I was in control of what it did and I was happy. Things have gone very well for me with KVM that way.

If you'd like a nice graphical VM configurer and launcher, I recommend AQEMU. I use that on a laptop to start Windows images so that I can test web pages in versions of MSIE, and the AQEMU works great. (I'm just glad I don't have to use Windows except for this testing!)

Good luck to you.