Thursday 27 February 2014

Re: Aiming for Qemu 2.0 in 14.04

Serge,

I gave 2.0 a quick spin with the internal tools System76 uses for golden image mastering. I tested using the latest Trusty desktop daily as the guest.

I found one possible regression compared to qemu 1.7 that I need to investigate further. Sometimes when using "-vga std", the resulting Gtk window seems to be at half-resolution, even though the guest was given the correct resolution (ie, the Gtk window is scaled at 1:2 by default, rather than being 1:1 by default). I haven't found a reliable way to reproduce this yet, but next time it happens, I'll be sure to take a screenshot and file a bug.

But overall qemu 2.0 seems solid. Some off-the-beaten-path options I tested:

* "-bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd" - in addition to doing a BIOS mode install, I also did a UEFI[1] install, which seems to work the same as it does under qemu 1.7

* "-vga qxl" - QXL is still a bit flaky with qemu 2.0 (rendering errors with the cursor especially), but it seems much more usable than QXL is with qemu 1.7

Thanks for making this PPA available! Hopefully qemu 2.0 can be landed in Trusty!

-Jason

[1] UEFI doesn't work with a Saucy host, but does work with a Trusty host, I believe thanks to the newer ovmf (edk2) in Trusty; likewise, UEFI doesn't work with a Saucy guest, although I'm not sure why this is; in summary, Trusty host + Trusty guest is the only working combination I've found


----- Original Message -----
From: "Serge Hallyn" <serge.hallyn@ubuntu.com>
To: ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com, ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2014 11:40:32 AM
Subject: Aiming for Qemu 2.0 in 14.04

Hi,

as shown https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/qemu/+bug/1284793
we are hoping to get Qemu 2.0 into 14.04. This is tricky due to
the timing - Qemu 2.0 release is scheduled for April 4
( http://wiki.qemu.org/Planning/2.0 ), with freeze for 14.04 being
April 10. However, the drastic reduction in patches carried in
the package, given the length of the LTS cycle, would be worthwhile.

In an attempt to shake out bugs as early as possible, I've started
building packages based on current git HEAD at ppa:ubuntu-virt/candidate.
This seems to be testing quite well for me on amd64. It would be
great if people could start testing the version in this ppa where
possible, as early as possible.

If we do run into bugs, we can hopefully get them fixed upstream before
release. If we can't get them fixed, then we'll know to stick with the
1.7 based qemu for 14.04.

thanks,
-serge

PS:
The version in this ppa also drops the omap3 patches cherrypicked
from qemu-linaro. If anyone finds they needed those, please let
me know so we can discuss how to proceed.


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