[Help Needed - gh0st] virtio-blk

[HulaHoop]

gh0st I need your help trying something if you still have the Whonix archives at hand. Extract a new pristine image and before you import it change the storage attributes to what I’ll post here. I don’t have pristine non-booted images of Whonix and downloading will take time. Then import and see if it boots. Reason is I’m trying to get virtio-blk working for a faster harddisk.

http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio#Disk_.28block.29_device_driver

Note, this step is only needed in order to transition a guest from IDE or SCSI to virtio. If you initially install the guest using a virtio disk, or if you update the kernel package while booted from a virtio disk, then this step is not needed.

<disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver type='qcow2'/> <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/Whonix-Custom-Workstation.qcow2'/> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> </disk>
This means that changing to virtio from IDE becomes a hassle requiring changes to the guest. I want to see if starting out with virtio instead means that we never have to go through this.

This gives me the idea that

[gh0st66]

I’m using the archive I downloaded from sourceforge whonix v8.6

[code]
Gave up waiting for root device. Commin Problems:

• Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
• Check rootdelay+ (did the system wait long enough?)
• Check root=did the system wait for the right device?)
• Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
  ALERT! /dev/sda1/ does not exist. Dropping to a shell!
  [ 31.399304] ohci_hcd: USB 1/1 ‘Open’ Host Controller (DHCI) Driver[/code]

[HulaHoop]

Ok thanks for helping and trying this for me. Its a libvirt bug with no solution I guess.

[Patrick]

One peace of good news:

Dev/KVM - Whonix

HulaHoop, why do you think you need a pristine unbooted image?

I think we need 3 steps here.

1. activate virtio-blk in a booted image
2. check virtio-blk is really in use (https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/KVM#How_to_check_if_virtio_storage_access_is_in_use_or_an_eventually_existing_fallback_driver.3F)
3. see how we can automate this using Whonix’s build script / Whonix’s packages

Have we already succeeded with step 1 and step 2?

We can not do step 3 before step 1 and 2. We should not do step 3 before step 1 and 2 because then we’re acting blindfolded.

Gave up waiting for root device.

Does this happensbecause /boot/grub/grub.cfg is still using

set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)'

and not

set root=’(/dev/vda,msdos1)’

?

The question is, if/how we can configure grub to work with UUIDs only, not requiring either /dev/sda or /dev/vda, only using UUIDs.