KVM Guest fails to autostart on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) host after a reboot.

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Issue

  • KVM Guest fails to autostart after the host was rebooted.

  • The following error is logged on the host in the /var/log/messages:

Aug 30 15:38:16 kvm0 journal: Failed to autostart VM 'TEST': internal error: Device alias was not set for PCI controller with index 1 required for device at address 0000:01:01.
  • The VM can be started without any errors using the virsh create <options> command.

Resolution

  • The virsh create <options> command just creates and starts a transient guest, but doesn't store any persistent definition for it.
  • The virsh define <path_to_vm.xml> command needs to be issued to make the guest configuration persistent and be written to /etc/libvirt/qemu directory for where it will be read to start the guest.

  • Then the guest can be started with virsh start <Name of KVM>. After that, you can set it as an autostart domain with virsh autostart <Name of KVM>.

  • Also it suggested to activate the libvirt-guests services to automatically suspended the guest when you reboot, rather than abrupt reboot.

Root Cause

The virsh define <path_to_vm.xml> command wasn't issued to make the guest configuration persistent.

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