All KVM domains (VM guests) disappeared after 12.3 -> 13.1 upgrade

English Virtualization
1

Since 12.3 was going EOL on 5Jan2014, I decided to upgrade to 13.1.

The upgrade went fine, but when I opened the Virtual Machine Manager GUI, all of my KVM domains were gone.

Since they were all on separate physical disk partitions, I knew all the data was still there so I tried to re-install them into KVM using both the GUI and console vm-install.

But I keep getting the error message “unknown OS type hvm”.

How do I get my domains back? Do I have to go gack to openSUSE 12.3 (where they worked)?
I’ve had issues with another machine doing a 13.1 -> 13.2 upgrade, so I’m reluctant to go there.

Environment:
AMD Phenom II x6 1100T CPU
16GB memory
AMD virtualization and IOMMU are enabled in the BIOS
openSUSE 13.1_x86_64

BTW-- I was also very disappointed to see that the upgrade reset all of the groups back to the default. I also had to reconfigure the groups for all of the users. I didn’t expect that kind of manipulation an an upgrade.

I appreciate any pointer and guidance.

ron

2

Skimming the google results for your error “unknown OS type hvm” suggests the error has many causes, all relating to a missing hvm definition. I noticed some hits that suggest

  • The location of the definition files changed (perhaps most likely)
  • The file containing definitions is damaged or otherwise inaccessable due to permissions.

So, it suggests that a copy and location of the hvm definition file in 12.3 needs to be compared to 13.1. If the 12.3 information can be appended to the file in 13.1, that might all be necessary for this specific problem.

If you decide to restore 12.3 from backup (if available) and upgrade again,

  • You should always rung “zypper up” before the upgrade.
  • You should note the libvirt and kvm versions
  • You should describe your upgrade method and guide (URL)

TSU