#392 FreeBSD/PC-BSD text screen corruption
Using either kvm-83, kvm-82 or kvm-81 I am unable to install FreeBSD or PC BSD due to screen corruption (screenshot attached). The initial boot menu is shown and is legible. Once you have selected the boot option & the boot process continues the screen becomes corrupted. I initially discovered the problem when setting up an LVM backed guest in virt-manager but I have attached a minimal cmd line below that allows you to trigger it.
1) It would appear that this problem was introduced in kvm-81 (kvm-80 does not exhibit the problem with FBSD or PCBSD but I have not tested any other versions of kvm)
2) If I use the -no-kvm switch with KVM-83 this problem does not occur.
Details:
Host: 1 x Intel Core i7 920, Fedora 10 64bit. 6GB memory (Dell Studio XPS 435)
kvm-83: self compiled - gcc version 4.3.2 20081105 (Red Hat 4.3.2-7)
cmd line: /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -m 512 -cdrom 7.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
Guests:
FreeBSD 7,1
PC-BSD 7.0.2
PS: I'd also like to add my thanks for creating KVM, it's fabulous tool. Many thanks
I can confirm this happens, when using VNC for the console.
Here's a workaround:
Start kvm with a -serial flag. You're going to use it as a serial console.
qemu-system-x86_64 -serial telnet::2226,server,nowait -cdrom 7.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso [...]
Then connect to port 2226:
telnet localhost 2226
Then when you boot FreeBSD CD, and the (legible) boot loader comes up. choose "6. Escape to loader prompt"
At the OK prompt, type: set console=comconsole
The OK prompt will now appear in your telnet session. Type "boot" and hit return. Continue with legible FreeBSD install via your telnet session.
You may want to set up a serial console on the FreeBSD system that you installed, as well.
Confirming the problem too.
kvm-83-2.fc11.x86_64
libvirt-0.6.0-1.fc11.x86_64
virt-manager-0.6.1-1.fc11.x86_64
qemu-0.9.1-12.fc11.x86_64
For the libvirt and virt-manager users, how they can use the workaround mentioned by toxxic:
Press 6 in the boot, type
set console=comconsole
use view->serial consoles and type
boot
(choose xterm as term type)
This is fixed in revision 6628 of QEMU, so probably soon in KVM. Any workaround to this bug as suggested ahead is a bad idea, as the screen is probably not the only affected by this bug. This means that some data can be corrupted.
The QEMU subversion browser can generate a patch for this issue:
http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/trunk/exec.c?r1=6601&r2=6628&pathrev=6628&root=qemu&view=patch
This patch installs cleanly against qemu/exec.c in KVM-81 and KVM-84.