[elbe-devel] 'elbe initvm create' hangs after "Loading additional components"

[Norbert Nemec | BLOKS.]

Hi there,

after two days on-and-off fighting with this issue, I finally found a 
painful workaround:

For some reason, the wget from inside initvm was always hanging randomly 
on one of the files during the debootstrap. I tried all kinds of things 
(especially, replacing the qemu-kvm virtio network device by something 
else. Never had any success.

Ultimately, the original question by Manuel gave me an idea:

Even though I did not strictly "need" a proxy, I locally installed 
tinyproxy anyway. This allowed me to set a timeout within the proxy 
resulting in well-defined failures of wget.

After a few such failures during during the "Install the base system" 
step, the debootstrap installers would then finish this step with an 
error but return to the installer menu, allowing me to repeat the whole 
step with most of the packages already downloaded. Since the download 
failures happened randomly in the first place, the repeated attempt to 
download would then succeed and the installation finish successfully.

Feels good to finally have this workaround. I still have no idea where 
the actual bug sits. Hopefully, it will not get in the way of actually 
using elbe...

Greetings,
Norbert



On 18.11.2015 15:16, Norbert Nemec | BLOKS. wrote:
> Still struggling:
>
> The hanging is indeed somehow connected with network-traffic. After 
> many tries and some debugging into the qemu session, I managed to 
> trace it down to the 'wget' command sometimes hanging on one of the 
> downloads. Sometimes this happens during "Loading additional 
> components" sometimes this steps succeeds but then "Installing the 
> base system" hangs. Also there, I find that it is one of the wget 
> calls that hangs in the middle of a download.
>
> I don't see how my own network connection would cause this kind of 
> problems. Unfortunately, I have no previous experience with qemu, so I 
> don't really know how to continue investigating.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>
>
> On 18.11.2015 08:57, manut at linutronix.de wrote:
>>> Hi there,
>> Hi Norbert,
>>
>>> on my machine, no matter what I do, the command 'elbe initvm create
>>> myconfig.xml' hangs after showing "Loading additional components". The
>>> process does not have any CPU load.
>> I think it s the first time the initial
>> Needs to download packages from a debian
>> Mirror.
>>
>> Do you need a proxy? Can you try
>> Monitoring the network traffic to
>> Get more detailed informations?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>    Manuel
>>
>>
>>> I tried several xml files, even without xml file, the command behaves
>>> identically.
>>> I called the command in an empty directory
>>> I even rebooted the machine once and then called the command in an 
>>> empty
>>> directory.
>>>
>>> Strangely enough, I believe that the command did run through at some
>>> point before. I have no idea what I changed in the meantime.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help!
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Norbert
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Dr. Norbert Nemec
>>> Software Manager
>>>
>>> BLOKS. GmbH
>>> Agnes-Pockels-Bogen 1
>>> 80992 Munich
>>> Germany
>>>
>>> Phone +49 89 5505 461 - 21
>>> Email nn at bloks.de
>>>
>>> VAT-ID: DE297724169 | Registered Court: AG Munich | HRB 215232 | 
>>> Managing
>>> Director: Daniel Meermann
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> elbe-devel mailing list
>>> elbe-devel at linutronix.de
>>> https://linutronix.de/mailman/listinfo/elbe-devel
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Dr. Norbert Nemec
Software Manager

BLOKS. GmbH
Agnes-Pockels-Bogen 1
80992 Munich
Germany

Phone +49 89 5505 461 - 21
Email nn at bloks.de

VAT-ID: DE297724169 | Registered Court: AG Munich | HRB 215232 | Managing Director: Daniel Meermann