Bug 2002326

Summary:	[RHEL 9 Beta] Use -machine graphics=off instead of sga device
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9	Reporter:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Component:	libguestfs	Assignee:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	YongkuiGuo <yoguo>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	9.0	CC:	kraxel, lersek, rjones, virt-maint, yoguo
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	Triaged
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Last Closed:	2021-09-13 10:33:54 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	1995807

Description Richard W.M. Jones 2021-09-08 14:51:47 UTC

This bug was initially created as a copy of Bug #2002325

I am copying this bug because: 



Description of problem:

libguestfs currently uses SGA (an extension of seabios)
to enable serial output of BIOS messages at boot.  However
we want to deprecate this device in RHEL 9.  (Unfortunately
it has already been removed.)

There is a new alternative to this:

 -machine graphics=off

which makes seabios direct all messages to the serial port.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

libguestfs-1.45.6-12.el9.x86_64

How reproducible:

?

Steps to Reproduce:
1. export LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct
2. libguestfs-test-tool

See if the BIOS messages appear in the output, eg:

  SGABIOS $Id$ (mockbuild@) Fri Apr 16 19:26:02 UTC 2021
  Term: 80x24
  4 0
  SeaBIOS (version 1.14.0-5.el9)
  Booting from ROM...

If they are not present then that's a problem.

Comment 2 Gerd Hoffmann 2021-09-08 15:05:57 UTC

> There is a new alternative to this:
> 
>  -machine graphics=off
> 
> which makes seabios direct all messages to the serial port.

FYI: seabios supports this for quite a while already.
latest RHEL-7 has it, all RHEL-8.x versions should have it too.
So you might consider switching over unconditionally.

Comment 3 Richard W.M. Jones 2021-09-08 15:30:07 UTC

It turns out that libvirt has no replacement for SGA
either, so while we would be able to remove this from
libguestfs in direct mode, we cannot remove it from
libguestfs in libvirt mode (and libvirt mode is the normal/
recommended way to use libguestfs).

So I don't think we can do this in time for RHEL 9 beta.

Comment 4 Richard W.M. Jones 2021-09-08 15:42:52 UTC

For direct backend:
https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2021-September/msg00047.html

This isn't a complete fix until there's a way to enable this
via libvirt.

Comment 5 Richard W.M. Jones 2021-09-13 10:33:54 UTC

This requires a rather invasive change to libvirt.  So
we filed a bug to revert the change in qemu for RHEL 9 Beta.

For RHEL 9 we have fixed this.