Bug 234477 - Sharing multiple files as disks between VMs has problems
Summary: Sharing multiple files as disks between VMs has problems
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: xen
Version: 5.0
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
: ---
Assignee: Daniel Berrangé
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2007-03-29 15:42 UTC by Jonathan Earl Brassow
Modified: 2008-04-17 01:32 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-04-17 01:32:17 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Jonathan Earl Brassow 2007-03-29 15:42:06 UTC
Description of problem:
I have 3 machines.  If I create a file to be used as a common drive between the
3 machines, it works fine.  My config line for that is as follows:

# Other xen config files have different hda, but same hdb
disk = [ 'file:/root/JB1,hda,w', 'file:/root/JB-common-1,hdb,w!' ]

# Illustrate successful run
[root@bid-08 ~]# for i in 1 2 3 ; do xm create /etc/xen/jx$i; done
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx1".
Started domain jb-xen-01
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx2".
Started domain jb-xen-02
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx3".
Started domain jb-xen-03

However, if I try to have 2 or more files for multiple shared drives, I can only
start two virtual machines.

# New disk line from xen config files
disk = [ 'file:/root/JB1,hda,w', 'file:/root/JB-common-1,hdb,w!',
'file:/root/JB-common-2,hdc,w!' ]

# Illustration of failure
[root@bid-08 ~]# for i in 1 2 3 ; do xm create /etc/xen/jx$i; done
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx1".
Started domain jb-xen-01
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx2".
Started domain jb-xen-02
Using config file "/etc/xen/jx3".
Error: destroyDevice() takes exactly 3 arguments (2 given)


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xen-3.0.3-25.el5

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create at least 2 files to be used as hard drives on VMs
2. try to start more than 2 VMs that share more than one drive

Comment 1 Stephen Tweedie 2007-04-07 20:18:02 UTC
Are these PV or FV guests, btw?  For PV, you want "tap:aio:" instead of "file:".

But it still looks like a bug in the python code somewhere.

Comment 2 Jonathan Earl Brassow 2007-04-09 16:33:24 UTC
FV guest


Comment 3 Daniel Berrangé 2007-04-19 15:52:07 UTC
You are limited to 8 loop devices by default.  Your config has 3 disks, so 3x3
== 9 loop devices - one more than you have. If you need more then you can use
the 'max_loop' parameter for the loop.ko kernel module, but adding an
appropriate line to /etc/modprobe.conf


Comment 4 Jonathan Earl Brassow 2007-04-19 16:05:59 UTC
Indeed, that is the problem.  Makes sense.

Would it be possible to print an error that said something like, "Max number of
loop devices exceeded" ?  Then I would have figured it out by myself pretty quickly.

So, this is NOTABUG; but I won't change the state if you want to make error
message changes.


Comment 5 Bill Burns 2008-04-17 01:32:17 UTC
Closing as not a nbug as per comment #4.


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