Mailing List Archive: Xen hvms crashing multiple win10 instances

I want a pretty simple setup: 3 (or more) copies of windows basically all
doing the same thing. no special hardware, nothing, I'm just connecting via
VNC.

However, I've noticed that having more than one of them causes them to
freeze quite quickly/easily. i.e. for N in 1 2 3 ; do xl create
/etc/xen/$N.hvm ; done -- pretty much always results in one or more hanging
during boot.

but if I run just one instance, it doesn't hang.

Smells like a race condition, specifically in the network emulation,
because when I delete the vif= line, I no longer get the crashes. Also, if
I switch to vif=rtl... then it crashes even faster; I only get a black
screen, never a windows logo.

Dell Poweredge (I just updated the bios, which seems to have helped a lot
from my prior stability issues)

Help?

- Kevin

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 3
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 94
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1225 v5 @ 3.30GHz
stepping : 3
microcode : 0xc6
cpu MHz : 3311.998
cache size : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mca cmov pat clflush
acpi
mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl
nonstop_tsc cpu
id pni pclmulqdq monitor est ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes
xsaveavx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch ibrs ibpb stibp
fsgsbase b
mi1 hle avx2 bmi2 erms rtm rdseed adx clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf
bogomips : 6623.99
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS \n \l

# dpkg -l | grep -i xen-hypervisor
ii xen-hypervisor-4.6-amd64 4.9.2-0ubuntu1
amd64 Transitional package for upgrade
ii xen-hypervisor-4.9-amd64 4.9.2-0ubuntu1
a
md64 Xen Hypervisor on AMD64

# cat /etc/xen/pos21.hvm
builder = "hvm"
name = "pos21.hvm"
memory = "4096"
vcpus = 1
vif = ['model=e1000']
disk = ['phy:/dev/lvg/pos21-root,hda,w' ]
vnc = 1
vncdisplay = 1
vnclisten = '10.10.22.15'
usb = 0
usbdevice = ['tablet'] # fix mouse tracking problem
vncpasswd = 'y'
boot = "dc"
stdvga = 1
videoram = 16
localtime = 1 # also need to manually set time inside windows to make it
stick
uuid = "092b8bea-f2c8-4874-b2ee-0ae6ac6bdf8e"

for grins, i setup 5 ubuntu server instan es and setup rc.local to run
(sleep 120;init 6)& and after 200 reboots, no crashes. then i changed it to
init 0 and instead restarted them with while : xl create -F r1.hvm ; sleep
1 ;done and after 800 ish restarts no crashes either. i dont know what else
i can do to narrow the problem. or generate debug info for someone to debug

On Sat, Jan 19, 2019 at 9:31 AM Kevin Wang <kjw@leftsock.com> wrote:

> I want a pretty simple setup: 3 (or more) copies of windows basically all
> doing the same thing. no special hardware, nothing, I'm just connecting via
> VNC.
>
> However, I've noticed that having more than one of them causes them to
> freeze quite quickly/easily. i.e. for N in 1 2 3 ; do xl create
> /etc/xen/$N.hvm ; done -- pretty much always results in one or more hanging
> during boot.
>
> but if I run just one instance, it doesn't hang.
>
> Smells like a race condition, specifically in the network emulation,
> because when I delete the vif= line, I no longer get the crashes. Also, if
> I switch to vif=rtl... then it crashes even faster; I only get a black
> screen, never a windows logo.
>
> Dell Poweredge (I just updated the bios, which seems to have helped a lot
> from my prior stability issues)
>
> Help?
>
> - Kevin
>
> # cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor : 3
> vendor_id : GenuineIntel
> cpu family : 6
> model : 94
> model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1225 v5 @ 3.30GHz
> stepping : 3
> microcode : 0xc6
> cpu MHz : 3311.998
> cache size : 8192 KB
> physical id : 0
> siblings : 4
> core id : 0
> cpu cores : 1
> apicid : 0
> initial apicid : 0
> fpu : yes
> fpu_exception : yes
> cpuid level : 13
> wp : yes
> flags : fpu de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mca cmov pat clflush
> acpi
> mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl
> nonstop_tsc cpu
> id pni pclmulqdq monitor est ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes
> xsaveavx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch ibrs ibpb stibp
> fsgsbase b
> mi1 hle avx2 bmi2 erms rtm rdseed adx clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1
> bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf
> bogomips : 6623.99
> clflush size : 64
> cache_alignment : 64
> address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
> power management:
>
> # cat /etc/issue
> Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS \n \l
>
> # dpkg -l | grep -i xen-hypervisor
> ii xen-hypervisor-4.6-amd64 4.9.2-0ubuntu1
> amd64 Transitional package for upgrade
> ii xen-hypervisor-4.9-amd64 4.9.2-0ubuntu1
> a
> md64 Xen Hypervisor on AMD64
>
> # cat /etc/xen/pos21.hvm
> builder = "hvm"
> name = "pos21.hvm"
> memory = "4096"
> vcpus = 1
> vif = ['model=e1000']
> disk = ['phy:/dev/lvg/pos21-root,hda,w' ]
> vnc = 1
> vncdisplay = 1
> vnclisten = '10.10.22.15'
> usb = 0
> usbdevice = ['tablet'] # fix mouse tracking problem
> vncpasswd = 'y'
> boot = "dc"
> stdvga = 1
> videoram = 16
> localtime = 1 # also need to manually set time inside windows to make it
> stick
> uuid = "092b8bea-f2c8-4874-b2ee-0ae6ac6bdf8e"
>