Why paravirtualized xen based virtual machine is not able to perform updates when registered using subscription-manager?

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6
  • Xen
  • Red Hat Subscription Manager

Issue

  • Why paravirtualized xen based virtual machine is not able to perform updates when registered using subscription-manager?

Resolution

  • There is no DMI mechanism for xen paravirtualized guests, however it gets identification from other means, mainly a UUID injected into the sysfs interface.

  • Need to run virt-who service on Xen hypervisor for this particular issue with following commands:

# yum install virt-who
# chkconfig virt-who on
# service virt-who start

-Once virt-who service send the virtual machine UUIDs to the Red Hat Customer portal, paravirtualized guest will be able to subscribe to required subscriptions.

Root Cause

  • virt-who service was not running on Xen hypervisor.

Diagnostic Steps

  • RHSM logs showing following dmi information errors in xen based paravirtualized virtual machine:
[WARNING]  @hwprobe.py:97 - Error reading system DMI information with <built-in function connector>: [src/dmidecodemodule.c:317] Erro
r decoding DMI data
[WARNING]  @hwprobe.py:90 - Error reading system DMI information: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'items'
[WARNING]  @hwprobe.py:407 - Error reading system DMI information: /dev/mem (mmap): Bad address
/dev/mem (mmap): Bad address
/dev/mem (mmap): Bad address
  • Component
  • xen

This solution is part of Red Hat’s fast-track publication program, providing a huge library of solutions that Red Hat engineers have created while supporting our customers. To give you the knowledge you need the instant it becomes available, these articles may be presented in a raw and unedited form.

Comments