From Fedora Project Wiki

Fedora Test Days
SPICE Test Day

Date 2013-05-30
Time all day

Website Features/Spice
IRC #spice, #fedora-test-day (webirc)
Mailing list spice-devel@lists.freedesktop.org


Can't make the date?
If you come to this page before or after the test day is completed, your testing is still valuable, and you can use the information on this page to test, file any bugs you find at Bugzilla, and add your results to the results section. If this page is more than a month old when you arrive here, please check the current schedule and see if a similar but more recent Test Day is planned or has already happened.

What to test?[edit]

Today's instalment of Fedora Test Day will focus on Spice, the protocol to access remote VMs and physical linux systems.

New features[edit]

  • Much improved multi-monitor support, see this blog post for details
  • Xspice: spice server running inside the remote system you're connecting to
  • spice-html5: a client running inside the browser
  • file transfer: ability to copy file from client system to guest/remote system using drag and drop
  • new connection methods for virt-viewer/remote-viewer:
    • using .vv files
    • connecting to oVirt/RHEV-M VMs using ovirt:// URIs (similar to existing virt-viewer qemu:///... invocation)

Existing features[edit]

  • connection to remote VMs
    • optional SSL/TLS encryption
    • optional password or SASL authentication
  • smartcard sharing/remoting
  • clipboard sharing for text and image data, working both ways
  • client-mode mouse (with smooth transition between guest/remote system and client system and rendered instantly)
  • guest/remote system monitor layout
    • arbitrary resolution
    • multiple monitors
  • video remoting
    • detection of video stream
    • sync of audio with video
  • USB redirection
  • migration of VM to another host while VM is running and client stays connected


Who's available[edit]

The following cast of characters will be available testing, workarounds, bug fixes, and general discussion ...

  • Development
    • Xspice: Jeremy White (jwhite), Alon Levy (alon/alevy/alonlevy)
    • spice-html5: Jeremy White
    • file transfer: Hans de Goede (hansg)
    • connection using ovirt:// URIs: Christophe Fergeau (teuf)
  • Quality Assurance - David Jaša (djasa), Martin Holec (Martix)

What do I need for testing?[edit]

Live CDs[edit]

Live CDs with all required packages installed are provided for this test day. Tips on using a live image are available at FedoraLiveCD.

Architecture SHA256SUM
x86_64 c214f3a326221b998be896c59bb5af1718030b3b5ecb85599f77e76309f0cd26
i686 da574c08e0469d890a3f33e7638369e8d7f21d9e9bd8e6e506d7d39c5f611856

Client[edit]

client means client program or client OS and environment. Preferred clients for this test day are:

  • virt-viewer or remote-viewer running on top of Fedora 19
  • spice-html5 from Fedora package opened on any of the supported browsers:

You can also use another clients:

  • virt-viewer or remote-viewer run on different OS or version
  • Gnome Boxes
  • virt-manager
  • virt-viewer for Windows. Installers are available for download at project site. Note that USB redirection won't work for you unless you build USBClerk yourself

Don't bother testing these:

  • spicy is a tool used sometimes for testing of some features. Don't expect it to work smoothly, or even work correctly
  • spicec (found in spice-client package on Fedora) is deprecated client that already didn't see any development for quite long time

Host[edit]

host is a machine that hosts virtual machines. When client is about to show a VM display, it connects to qemu process running on the host.

  • you can reuse the host you used for Virtualization Test Day
  • if you don't have the virtualization host yet, follow virtualization test day instructions
  • alternatively, you can use any other spice-capable virtualization host
  • for testing of connecting to oVirt (or RHEV) VMs, you'll need access to a running oVirt (RHEV) setup

Remote system[edit]

A physical or virtual system running Xspice server is called a remote system from now on

Guest system[edit]

Virtualized system is frequently call guest. If you don't have any VM with guest system installed, follow virtualization test day instructions.

The guest system needs add-on software called spice agent installed to make all features fully work:

  • on Fedora, it is provided by spice-vdagent package, installed by default. It should be running from start, too (one spice-vdagentd process and two spice-vdagent processes - one for login manager and one for user session)
  • on Windows, please install Windows Guest Tools from project download page

Quick VM installation[edit]

Gnome Boxes[edit]

Just start Boxes, create a new VM and follow the guide.

virt-install[edit]

virt-install can configure a VM for you including all the subtleties and even start an installation:

virt-install -c SESSION --name NAME --memory MEMORY [--cdrom CDROM|--location LOCATION] --os-variant OS [--disk DISKOPTS|--nodisks] --graphics spice --video qxl [--video qxl] --channel spicevmc --redirdev usb,type=spicevmc [--redirdev usb,type=spicevmc] 

where:

  • local SESSION is qemu:///system for system-wide session of qemu:///session for actual user session (this is what Boxes uses). Refer to libvirt documentation if you wish to install VM on a different hypervisor
  • NAME is VM name
  • MEMORY is memory size in MB
  • a VM can be installed either from CDROM or, for some distributions, LOCATION pointing to installation tree is supported
  • OS is one of options returned by virt-install --os-variant list. It allows virt-install to better optimize the VM setup
  • specify --nodisks for VMs running from live media. DISKOPTS is a comma-separated list of keys. For file-backed VM disk, you should be fine to specify just path=path/to/file,size=size_in_GB. If you wish to stick with gnome-boxes default VM image location, specify path=~/.local/share/gnome-boxes/images/
  • specify up to four --video qxl stanzas in order to support multiple monitor on Windows VMs
  • number of --redirdev usb,type=spicevmc stanzas limits number of USB devices that can be redirected to the guest OS

virt-install sets up the VM and starts installation. The installation itself is not automatic though.

Test Cases[edit]

New features[edit]

Existing features[edit]

  • migration

Test Results[edit]

If you have problems with any of the tests, report a bug to Bugzilla using this key:

  • use spice-gtk component for issues happening on client side
  • use spice-server component for issues happening on virtualization host
  • use spice-vdagent component for guest agent issues
  • use Freedesktop bugzilla to report issues in spice components used in other distributions
  • please specify complete environment: client OS and architecture, client (virt-viewer or spice-html5) version, host OS with qemu-kvm and spice-server versions, guest OS version, guest agent version

If you are unsure about exactly how to file the report or what other information to include, just ask on IRC (#spice at irc.gimp.org) and we will help you. Once you have completed the tests, add your results to the Results table below, following the example results from the first line as a template. The first column should be your name with a link to your User page in the Wiki if you have one. Please specify your environment in second column as i is in the template For each test case, use the result template to enter your result, as shown in the example result line.

User Test environment Drag and drop file transfer Test XSpice Test use a pure Javascript Spice client Direct connection to oVirt/RHEV VMs References
Sample User
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: F19, qemu-kvm-1.4.1-3.fc19.x86_64, spice-server-0.12.2-5.fc19.x86_64
  • Guest: F19 with Gnome 3, spice-vdagent-0.14.0-2.fc19.x86_64
none
Pass pass
Warning warn
[1]
Fail fail
[2]
  1. Test pass, but also encountered RHBZ #54321
  2. RHBZ #12345
tassadar
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: F19, qemu-kvm-1.4.2-2.fc19.x86_64, spice-server-0.12.3-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Guest: F19 with Gnome 3, spice-vdagent-0.14.0-2.fc19.x86_64
Pass pass
Pass pass
Warning warn
[1]
info
[2]
  1. It works, but RHBZ #968931
  2. Don't have access to these
mkovarik
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: F19, qemu-kvm-1.4.2-2.fc19.x86_64, spice-server-0.12.3-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Guest: F19 with Gnome 3, spice-vdagent-0.14.0-2.fc19.x86_64
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
none
jkoten
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64, gnome-boxes-3.8.3-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: RHEV-M 3.1
  • Guest: Rhel7 Alpha3, spice-vdagent-0.12.1-1.el7.x86_64
none
Pass pass
[1]
none
Fail fail
[2][3]
  1. Tested on localhost
  2. Boxes crash on gnome session start RHBZ #968929
  3. Connecting with remote-viewer - Guest crashed on gnome session startRHBZ #969069
Zbyszek
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: x86_64, F19, qemu-kvm-1.4.2-2.fc19.x86_64, spice-server-0.12.3-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Guest: i686, testday-20130530-i686.iso + xorg-x11-drv-qxl-0.1.1-0.8.20130514git77a1594.fc19 for RHBZ #965101 [1]
Fail fail
[2]
Pass pass
[3]
none
none
  1. Hit RHBZ #969084, RHBZ #969118 on the way.
  2. Works fine with small files, but hangs when transferring an iso image RHBZ #969109
  3. RFE: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65185
vbudikov
  • Client: F19, virt-viewer-0.5.6-1.fc19.x86_64, gnome-boxes-3.8.2-5.fc19.x86_64
  • Host: F19, qemu-kvm-1.4.2-2.fc19.x86_64, spice-server-0.12.3-1.fc19.x86_64
  • Guest: F19 with Gnome 3, spice-vdagent-0.14.0-2.fc19.x86_64
Pass pass
Pass pass
none
none