Virtualization tools forget choice of e1000 as emulated NIC

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 as Xen privileged domain (Dom0)

  • Itanium architecture (ia64)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 virtualisation guest (DomU)
  • Emulated Intel PRO/1000 NIC (e1000)

Issue

  • e1000 emulation has been selected for a virtual machine (VM) by adding model=e1000 to the vif line in /etc/xen/VirtualMachineName
  • This setting is ignored/forgotten when the VM is rebooted via the xm command or via virt-manager and the VM is reverted to the default emulated NIC, a RealTek RTL-8139.
  • The only way to get the e1000 emulation back is to shut down and cold start the VM using xm or virt-manager.

Resolution

Update to xen-3.0.3-120.el5 (from RHBA-2011:0031-1; included in RHEL 5.6 GA) or later.

Root Cause

e1000 network device emulation for the benefit of Windows 2003 guests on Itanium was added as of xen 3.0.3-80.el5 (RHBA-2009-0118) in response to bug #344861 but this enablement was basic. Full integration of this NIC emulation into libvirt/virt-manager was not implemented. Specifically, the xenstore was not enhanced to store the chosen type of emulated NIC. That enhancement has been implemented in xen-3.0.3-120.el5.

Comments

Refer to Itanium Support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for details on the support status of the Itanium architecture for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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