XenServer 6.5(SP1) - HVM 're0: watchdog timeout' errors...

[Adam McDougall]

On 09/07/2015 11:00, Karl Pielorz wrote:
> 
> --On 07 September 2015 16:51 +0200 Roger Pau Monné
> <roger.pau at citrix.com> wrote:
> 
>> This sounds like a problem in the if_re driver on FreeBSD or a bug in
>> Qemu emulation. As a workaround, could you try to use the emulated e1000
>> instead of the realtek? AFAIK it should also provide better performance.
>>
>> Since you are using XenServer I'm not sure of the exact rune, with OSS
>> Xen you basically need to add "model=e1000" to the network configuration
>> line.
> 
> Hi Roger,
> 
> I'd love to try that - but as we're running full 'XenServer' (i.e.
> installed from XenServer .ISO) I have no idea where (or even if it's
> possible) to set that :(
> 
> Last time I tried looking it up I hit a bit of a dead end, I'll have
> another look [in fact, I think it may have actually been impossible to
> set in XenServer as I seem to remember someone saying that XenServer
> doesn't have that NIC model/emulation available, only Realtek or PV!]
> 
> But I'll have another look...
> 
> -Karl

Try this:
http://discussions.citrix.com/topic/329848-openbsd-with-message-watchdog-timeout/

I've used it before for an OpenBSD guest VM.  If that patch is in place
on any XenServer you migrate to, it should set e1000 for the NIC type if
you set NicEmulation in the Custom Fields as described in step 2.

A cleaner patch would just let you specify any driver you want, but this
one is semi-hardcoded for e1000.  You could also try 'virtio' with:
argv = [arg.replace('rtl8139','virtio') for arg in argv]