19.3. SPICE Log Files

SPICE log files are useful when troubleshooting SPICE connection issues. To start SPICE debugging, change the log level to debugging. Then, identify the log location.
Both the clients used to access the guest machines and the guest machines themselves have SPICE log files. For client side logs, if a SPICE client was launched using the native client, for which a console.vv file is downloaded, use the remote-viewer command to enable debugging and generate log output.

19.3.1. SPICE Logs for Hypervisor SPICE Servers

Table 19.3. SPICE Logs for Hypervisor SPICE Servers

Log Type Log Location To Change Log Level:
Host/Hypervisor SPICE Server
/var/log/libvirt/qemu/(guest_name).log
Run export SPICE_DEBUG_LEVEL=5 on the host/hypervisor prior to launching the guest. This variable is parsed by QEMU, and if run system-wide will print the debugging information of all virtual machines on the system. This command must be run on each host in the cluster. This command works only on a per-host/hypervisor basis, not a per-cluster basis.

19.3.2. SPICE Logs for Guest Machines

Table 19.4. spice-vdagent Logs for Guest Machines

Log Type Log Location To Change Log Level:
Windows Guest
C:\Windows\Temp\vdagent.log
C:\Windows\Temp\vdservice.log
Not applicable
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Guest
Use journalctl as the root user.
To run the spice-vdagentd service in debug mode, as the root user create a /etc/sysconfig/spice-vdagentd file with this entry: SPICE_VDAGENTD_EXTRA_ARGS=”-d -d”
To run spice-vdagent in debug mode, from the command line: 
$ killall - u $USER spice-vdagent 
$ spice-vdagent -x -d [-d] [ ∣& tee spice-vdagent.log ]

19.3.3. SPICE Logs for SPICE Clients Launched Using console.vv Files

For Linux client machines:

  1. Enable SPICE debugging by running the remote-viewer command with the --spice-debug option. When prompted, enter the connection URL, for example, spice://[virtual_machine_IP]:[port]. 
    #  remote-viewer --spice-debug
  2. To run SPICE client with the debug parameter and to pass a .vv file to it, download the console.vv file and run the remote-viewer command with the --spice-debug option and specify the full path to the console.vv file. 
    # remote-viewer --spice-debug /path/to/console.vv
For Windows client machines:

  1. In versions of virt-viewer 2.0-11.el7ev and higher, virt-viewer.msi installs virt-viewer and debug-viewer.exe.
  2. Run the remote-viewer command with the spice-debug argument and direct the command at the path to the console: 
    remote-viewer --spice-debug path\to\console.vv
  3. To view logs, connect to the virtual machine, and you will see a command prompt running GDB that prints standard output and standard error of remote-viewer.