Description of problem: My test scenario is a simple KVM image created through virt-manager w/ Spice, QXL 64 MiB, 2 GiB RAM, 4 Cores and no disks at all -- just a plain old LiveCD attached to the CDROM. Starting this (or any other) VM through virt-manager so that it opens the UI-integrated SPICE/VNC console, leads to a malfunctioning SPICE/VNC console. There seems to be a race-condition: Sometimes you can only see the SeaBIOS text, sometimes even that only partially and sometimes it even gets to the LiveCD prompt itself but that is as far as it goes. Eventually the console is no longer updated. Connecting to the VM through an external Spice or VNC client works just fine and the VM is up and running as well. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): virt-manager: 1.0.1, 1.1.0 and master. libvirt: 1.2.6 and 1.2.9. spice-gtk: 0.25 and master qemu: 2.1.1 Kernel: 3.16.1 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create a VM for Qemu w/ only a LiveCD attached (no disks whatsoever) 2. Configure the VM for either VNC or SPICE 3. Start the VM through virt-manager Actual results: Console freezes at random points but always within a second or so. Expected results: Console just works. Additional info:
After wading through the virt-manager sources and debugging this, I eventually came to realize that this seemingly is a cairo problem that surfaces if the xlib-xcb adapter is enabled. For completeness, here a link to the relevant bug report: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85005 Sorry for the noise. :-(