Virtualization Extensions are unavailable

[cchinicz]

Hi,

I've got my new Blackbird and installed Fedora 32 on it, KVM and GNOME BOXES. When I try to create VMs I get the following error messages: "Virtualization extensions are unavailable on your system. Check your BIOS settings to enable them".

I've tried all options on PetitBoot menu but could not find how to enable virtualization extensions.

Anyone had this issue? Any help is welcome.

Thanks,

[madscientist159]

Hi,

I've got my new Blackbird and installed Fedora 32 on it, KVM and GNOME BOXES. When I try to create VMs I get the following error messages: "Virtualization extensions are unavailable on your system. Check your BIOS settings to enable them".

I've tried all options on PetitBoot menu but could not find how to enable virtualization extensions.

Anyone had this issue? Any help is welcome.

Thanks,

Virtualization is always enabled.  Are you seeing that error from a specific piece of software or from the direct QEMU command line?

[cchinicz]

I saw that error from the GNOME Boxes. If I run the command egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo I also get no response. Any idea?

[madscientist159]

I saw that error from the GNOME Boxes.

Sounds like a bug in GNOME Boxes, which to be honest isn't an application I'd heard of before today.  Can you try a different application like virt-manager?  You might want to file a bug report against GNOME Boxes as well.

If I run the command egrep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo I also get no response. Any idea?

Most architectures don't report their hardware support flags in /proc/cpuinfo, that's pretty much an x86-only thing.  POWER has full virtualization support in Linux, it's not something that can be turned off unless you build a kernel without the needed support.  If you look for /dev/kvm, you should see that it exists, that's all you need.

[cchinicz]

Hi,

Thanks. I've succeeded to create a VM using virt-manager.

But the path /dev/kvm does not exist in my file system. Does that mean that I'm running software virtualization and not hardware virt?

Regards

[madscientist159]

Hi,

Thanks. I've succeeded to create a VM using virt-manager.

But the path /dev/kvm does not exist in my file system. Does that mean that I'm running software virtualization and not hardware virt?

Regards

Good to hear you got it working.  If you're not noticing the VMs being extremely slow, then you're using hardware virtualization.  It's possible Fedora doesn't ship with the /dev/kvm device node, but I'll admit to being a bit out of my depth with the RPM-based distros.

You could try "sudo virt-host-validate" (provided by libvirt-client) and see if that shows anything on the actual status of the virtualization support?

[ClassicHasClass]

/dev/kvm is present on Fedora. I think this is more of an issue with GNOME Boxes. I just call QEMU directly and KVM works fine.

[shawnanastasio]

Check to see if you have the kvm_hv kernel module loaded with

Code: [Select]

lsmod |grep kvm
 If it's not there, try

Code: [Select]

sudo modprobe kvm_hv

[cchinicz]

Hi Guys, thank you all

madscientist159 wrote: "try "sudo virt-host-validate"" and I got an almost all PASS, except a few FAILs (below) which I do not know how to fix
- LXC: Checking for cgroup 'cpu' controller support                         : FAIL (Enable 'cpu' in kernel Kconfig file or mount/enable cgroup controller in your system)
- LXC: Checking for cgroup 'cpuset' controller support                      : FAIL (Enable 'cpuset' in kernel Kconfig file or mount/enable cgroup controller in your system)
- LXC: Checking for cgroup 'freezer' controller support                     : FAIL (Enable 'freezer' in kernel Kconfig file or mount/enable cgroup controller in your system)
- LXC: Checking for cgroup 'blkio' controller support                       : FAIL (Enable 'blkio' in kernel Kconfig file or mount/enable cgroup controller in your system)

ClassicHasClass wrote: "/dev/kvm is present on Fedora." ; I found it

shawnanastasio wrote: "lsmod |grep kvm" which produces the following response:
kvm_hv                235985  0
kvm                   357010  1 kvm_hv

So, it seems hardware virtualization is enabled. I created a Fedora 32 VM through virt-manager with 2 vCPUs and installed stress. When I stress the 2 vCPUs I see on the host System Monitor that 2 of my 16 threads are at 100% (thread 9 and some other thread, which keeps jumping among the other 15..). So, if I got it right, this VM is really having 2 vCPU fully allocated to it. If it did not have hardware virtualization enable would I still be able to allocate 2 threads?

Regards

[ClassicHasClass]

I think a better means is to try to create a VM in QEMU directly. I think you have too many layers in the middle to verify functionality. Try this: https://www.talospace.com/2018/11/making-your-talos-ii-into-ibm-pseries.html

If it boots AIX (fast) with KVM on, then you know it's working, and the other issues are most likely related to configuration.

[cchinicz]

Hi ClassicHasClass, thanks. I've checked the link you sent, it's way advanced for me.