i8042.c: No controller found

[Jerry James]

Hi all,

I'm doing some kernel development, using a virtual machine to manage
the frequent reboots.  The host is an 8-core x86_64 Fedora 10 machine
with 8GB of RAM.  The guest is a 2-core x86_64 CentOS 5.3 machine with
1GB of RAM.  I'm starting the virtual machine as follows:

qemu-kvm -m 1G -smp 2 -k en-us -std-vga -name CentOS5.3 -hda
/var/lib/libvirt/images/CentOS5.3.img "$@"

Approximately every other reboot, when the CentOS kernel is just
starting up, I see this message on the console:

i8042.c: No controller found

and then, when the machine is fully booted, I cannot use the mouse or
keyboard in the guest machine, leaving me with only one option: reboot
and hope it doesn't happen the next time.  Usually one more reboot
fixes it, but not always.  Does anyone know what is causing this?

Just in case the "-k en-us" has something to do with it, I added that
because otherwise the arrow keys don't work correctly.  Up arrow gets
mapped to PrtScn, for example.

As an aside, I used to use virt-manager, but couldn't figure out how
to get virt-manager to turn on -std-vga.  If someone can solve that
problem for me, I'll go back to virt-manager.

Thanks,
--
Jerry James
http://loganjerry.googlepages.com/
http://jjames.fedorapeople.org/

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Fri, 2009-04-10 at 13:47 -0600, Jerry James wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm doing some kernel development, using a virtual machine to manage
> the frequent reboots.  The host is an 8-core x86_64 Fedora 10 machine
> with 8GB of RAM.  The guest is a 2-core x86_64 CentOS 5.3 machine with
> 1GB of RAM.  I'm starting the virtual machine as follows:
>
> qemu-kvm -m 1G -smp 2 -k en-us -std-vga -name CentOS5.3 -hda
> /var/lib/libvirt/images/CentOS5.3.img "$@"
>
> Approximately every other reboot, when the CentOS kernel is just
> starting up, I see this message on the console:
>
> i8042.c: No controller found

I doubt this message is your problem, see e.g.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/440470

It's just that that message is printed using KERN_ERR instead of
KERN_WARN or KERN_INFO.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Jerry James]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Mark McLoughlin  wrote:
> I doubt this message is your problem, see e.g.
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/440470
>
> It's just that that message is printed using KERN_ERR instead of
> KERN_WARN or KERN_INFO.

No, that bugzilla report is for a machine that has a USB keyboard, so
the warning didn't matter.  Running lsusb in my guest shows that there
are no USB devices.  I see this in dmesg after a successful boot (I
can't copy&paste out of the guest, so pardon any typos):

PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBD,PNP0f13:MOU] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0

So the i8042 is handling both keyboard and mouse input for the guest OS.

Here's another clue: if I leave the host's focus in the guest window
while the guest reboots, I never have this problem.  It's only when I
get impatient and switch to another window to do something that the
problem occurs.

[Jerry James]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Jerry James  wrote:
> Here's another clue: if I leave the host's focus in the guest window
> while the guest reboots, I never have this problem.  It's only when I
> get impatient and switch to another window to do something that the
> problem occurs.

That's been true for days on end.  Then, just after sending this
message, I rebooted my CentOS 5.3 guest, left the focus in the guest
window, and got this error.  So much for generalizations....

[Anand Kumria]

Does '-std-vga' imply SDL? Perhaps it is the SDL bug mentioned on the list?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480065

Cheers,
Anand

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Jerry James  wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Jerry James  wrote:
> > Here's another clue: if I leave the host's focus in the guest window
> > while the guest reboots, I never have this problem.  It's only when I
> > get impatient and switch to another window to do something that the
> > problem occurs.
>
> That's been true for days on end.  Then, just after sending this
> message, I rebooted my CentOS 5.3 guest, left the focus in the guest
> window, and got this error.  So much for generalizations....
> --
> Jerry James
> http://loganjerry.googlepages.com/
>
> Fedora-virt mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt

[Jerry James]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Anand Kumria  wrote:
> Does '-std-vga' imply SDL? Perhaps it is the SDL bug mentioned on the list?
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480065
>
> Cheers,
> Anand

No, -std-vga can be used with VNC, too.  I'm running it that way right now.

I have noticed that this problem never occurs with my Rawhide guest.
It's only happening on a heavily modified kernel in a CentOS5.3 guest.
 It isn't even the same version of the kernel as that distributed by
CentOS.  It's probably a bug in this particular kernel.