Re: Problems booting NetBSD/Xen on Intel NUC 12 Extreme w/ i9-12900

[Johan Stenstam <johani%johani.org@localhost>]

Hi,

>> In this context I would like to make a comment that might also help Johan. When I set the parameter to "vga=ask", what I expected (normally a prompt should appear to select the graphics mode) does not happen, the screen also goes black, but the system continues to boot and is then accessible via ssh. The whole thing is also quite fast - maybe this is the workaround for the missing "console=none”.
> 
> Aha. Yes, vga=ask has the same effect for me. That’s really useful, at least as an interim solution until someone figures out what’s really going on at the point of handover from Xen to DOM0.

I spoke too soon. There are still problems. Now with booting DOMUs.

I have what I believe is a mostly correctly working DOM0. I have xenstored and xenconsoled running, started from /etc/rc.d/xencommons, and all looks fine. However, because of the console issues and the vga=ask workaround I get absolutely zero error messages or logs from the xen hypervisor. So when stuff doesn’t work (in this case starting a DOMU) the feedback is only:

bash-5.2# cat /var/log/xen/xl-master.log
Waiting for domain master (domid 3) to die [pid 2926]
Domain 3 has shut down, reason code 3 0x3
Action for shutdown reason code 3 is destroy
Domain 3 needs to be cleaned up: destroying the domain
Done. Exiting now

… which is not really helping to debug the problem. I know that the disk image is fine, and I use a really trivial DOMU config:

name = "master"
kernel = "/usr/store/xen/kernels/netbsd.XEN3_DOMU.amd64.9.2_REL"
memory=1024
vif = ['mac=00:16:3e:12:00:ff, bridge=bridge0', 'bridge=bridge1', 'bridge=bridge2']
disk = ['file:/usr/store/xen/lab/vm/master.img.amd64-nbxen,0x3,w' ]
root = “xbd0a”

I know that documentation for the xl.cfg format has been a bit inconsistent over the years, but this config works fine with Xen 4.13 and NetBSD 9.2 so I don’t think that’s where the problem lies. Googling for “xen reason code 3” provides absolutely no clue. So, in spite of having used NetBSD/xen for a very long time I’m beginning to feel like an absolute noob.

Any suggestions for where to look appreciated.

Regards,
Johan