either xen or custom

[Roger Pau Monné]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 3:46 PM Lizbeth Mutterhunt, PhD
<lizbethmutterhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Op Donnerstag, 14. Jänner 2021 09:21:09 CET schreef u:
> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 12:11:40AM +0100, lizbethmutterhunt at gmail.com wrote:
> > > to make a long story short: either I get a lock (hard to avoid, not to be
> > > unlimited with ulimit -l unlimited) or a boot of xen and a blank screen
> > > with reboot after a 10 seconds with vga=current.
> >
> > Hello,
> Hello Roger,
>
> > Sorry for the delay on the reply. I'm afraid I will need more info in
> > order to help diagnose your issue.
> no matter, was occupied other ways; using VirtualBox at the moment, slow and
> the hypervisor tends to make long waiting-times...
>
> > How do you get the lock that you mention? Is it booting Xen, or just
> > plain FreeBSD?
> It's booting XEN, but not the CURRENT-kernel afterwards or it boots the
> CURRENT but not xen. I have in /boot/loader.conf
>
> xen_kernel="/boot/xen"
> xen_cmdline="dom0_mem=4048M dom0_max_vcpus=4 dom0=pvh com1=115200,8n1
> guest_loglvl=all loglvl=all"
> iommu="force,no-intremap"

The iommu=... option should either be inside the xen_cmdline or
removed, it's not an option of loader.conf.

> if_tap_load="YES"
> console=vga,com1

console= should also be inside the xen_cmdline= option, not here as a
separate line here.

Your xen_cmdline should be:

xen_cmdline="dom0_mem=4048M dom0_max_vcpus=4 dom0=pvh com1=115200,8n1
guest_loglvl=all loglvl=all console=vga,com1 noreboot"

Note it's all a single line.

> boot_multicons="YES"
> boot_serial="YES"
> console="comconsole,vidconsole"
> vmm_load="YES"
> vga=current
>
> and in /etc/rc.conf:
>
> xencommons_enable="YES"
> cloned_interfaces="bridge0"
> ifconfig_bridge0="addm bge0 SYNCDHCP"
> ifconfig_bge0="up"
>
> sudo ulimit -l
> unlimited
>
> sudo uname -a
> FreeBSD freeBSD-CURRENT 13.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT #5 r368997: Tue Jan
> 12 13:46:33 CET 2021     lizbeth at freeBSD-CURRENT:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/
> sys/LIZBETH  amd64
>
> it's a no-debug kernel!
>
> /etc/ttys
> xc0     "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
>
>
> when booting without XEN I get the following with 'xl dmesg'
>
> xencall: error: Could not obtain handle on privileged command interface /dev/
> xen/privcmd: No such file or directory
> libxl: error: libxl.c:102:libxl_ctx_alloc: cannot open libxc handle: No such
> file or directory
> cannot init xl context

Right, without booting as Xen dom0 /dev/xen/privcmd is simply not there.

> a normal boot without xen is on pastebin (VERBOSE_SYSINIT=2)
>
> https://pastebin.com/RN1SYXdW
>
>
> > Do you have a serial console attached to the box so that we could
> > see the log of Xen and FreeBSD booting?
> how to? every time I boot into xen I have to zpool import -f and mount it from
> rescue CD. Is there a log from the last boot somewhere? I duckduckgo'd a bit
> but couldn't find anything else than the dmesg. As it is not a kernel crash
> there's nothing in /var/crash and on /var/run I have the running boot inside.

You would need to plug a null-modem into the serial port of your box,
or alternatively use something like SoL (Serial over LAN) if your box
supports it.

> Maybe you tell me how to show the log from the serial console; btw, I tried
> both ways, only serial, only bios or both --- no matter, xen's booting,
> screen's blanking for the "normal" kernel but nothing happens but a sudden
> reboot. Is it on the /var/* somewhere when booting from resucue?

There won't be any logs from Xen in the disk, because Xen has no
access to the disk at all.

When booting with Xen, do you see any error message on the screen?

I've added noreboot to the Xen command line above so that you can
maybe take a photo of the crash message if there's any?

Roger.