Ubuntu 14.04: no keyboard in console

[scpcom]

I built and installed xenserver-core with buildroot 9cbc74fc437f48a35e04aacc8c3675c9a4048cb9 on Ubuntu 14.04 amd64. Then did a simple test setup: LVM Local Storage, NFS ISO Storage, Windows 7 VM (one 64 bit, one 32 bit), separate Windows 7 Client with XenCenter. Install went fine but while using I found some issues: If I open a console of a VM in XenCenter 6.5 (also tried 6.2.2) mouse is working but keyboard not. Everytime I press a key similar sequence of events like this happen:

Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr stunnel: LOG3[2858:140410270562048]: transfer: s_poll_wait: TIMEOUTclose exceeded: closing
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr stunnel: LOG5[2858:140410270562048]: Connection closed: 3215632 byte(s) sent to SSL, 3329 byte(s) sent to socket
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: message repeated 921 times: [ [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping]
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|628 INET :::80|Connection to VM console R:faccda03a9f9|console] Proxy exited
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr stunnel: LOG5[2858:140410270562048]: Service [xapi] accepted connection from 192.168.2.2:49530
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr stunnel: LOG5[2858:140410270562048]: connect_blocking: connected 127.0.0.1:80
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr stunnel: LOG5[2858:140410270562048]: Service [xapi] connected remote server from 127.0.0.1:57582
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: message repeated 22 times: [ [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping]
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [20150119T20:42:11.131Z|audit|us-xenasr|662 INET :::80|handler:http/connect_console D:c6296c53ec8b|audit] ('trackid=5f4732ca8e6286f83e47d5b8167f5d09' 'LOCAL_SUPERUSER' 'root' 'ALLOWED' 'OK' 'HTTP' 'http/connect_console' ())
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xenopsd-xenlight: [debug|us-xenasr|82|Connection to VM console R:7af3c7500e0f|xenops_server] VM.stat b65f2b2a-9037-18a4-4a30-33760c7f55ad
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: message repeated 2 times: [ [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping]
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|662 INET :::80|Connection to VM console R:7af3c7500e0f|console] VM OpaqueRef:e51f8de7-cf3e-ca25-fe44-def56949bdd8 console port: Some unix:/var/run/nonpersistent/xenopsd/xenlight/vnc/b65f2b2a-9037-18a4-4a30-33760c7f55ad
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|662 INET :::80|Connection to VM console R:7af3c7500e0f|console] Connected; running proxy (between fds: 48 and 50)
Jan 19 21:42:11 us-xenasr xapi: [debug|us-xenasr|134||xapi_stats] rrdd says next reading is overdue by inf seconds; not sleeping

If I use OpenXenManager keyboard works. Does OpenXenManager send keys in a different way than XenCenter? Because of other limitations OpenXenManager has it would be nice If keyboard works in XenCenter too.

[djs55]

I've observed this too. When I used wireshark to examine the VNC stream I saw XenCenter opening multiple simultaneous VNC connections to the same console. My theory is that regular qemu doesn't support this and it has been worked around in the XenServer qemu patch queue. I think XenCenter's VNC client should be fixed to multiplex everything down a single connection.

[scpcom]

I also tried the development snapshots: http://xenserver.org/open-source-virtualization-download/2-uncategorised/115-development-snapshots.html

The CentOS 6 December vesions hat xen 4.4.1 and console was not working correctly too.

But now, version 2015-02-05 works fine: centos-release-6-5.el6.centos.11.1.x86_64 xen-hypervisor-4.5.0-2.0.0.572.30182.x86_64 xapi-core-1.9.57-7168.x86_64

Do they use another branch of xapi/xen? I thought xenserver-core is a subset of xenserver.org distro. How these projects work together?

[djs55]

Currently xenserver.org builds use a different version of Xen and qemu. My theory is that a patch in the xenserver.org qemu patch queue is fixing the keyboard. I think @euanh was investigating whether buildroot could -- at least optionally -- use the exact same version of Xen and qemu as xenserver.org. So far we've stuck to whatever the distro provides, but this isn't perfect (clearly).

The longer term goal is to replace the xenserver.org ad-hoc build and packaging scripts with the buildroot ones. I think we're making progress -- both buildroot and xenserver.org's trunk snapshots are now using the [xenserver/planex] tool to build RPMs (via mock) for a large subset of the packages.