On the /var/log/libvirt/qemu/p3k0401.log:
LC_ALL=C PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin HOME=/ /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -S -M rhel5.4.0 -m 1024 -smp 1 -name p3k0401 -uuid 7658c102-0738-724c-40eb-e1c58b2c2369 -domid 3 -nographic -monitor pty -pidfile /var/run/libvirt/qemu//p3k0401.pid -no-reboot -boot c -kernel /var/lib/libvirt/boot/virtinst-vmlinuz.O_SOVo -initrd /var/lib/libvirt/boot/virtinst-initrd.img.0ba0Fp -append method=http://10.1.4.80 -drive file=//dev/VolGroup01/p3k0401logvol,if=ide,index=0,cache=none -net nic,macaddr=54:52:00:15:c4:50,vlan=0 -net tap,fd=16,script=,vlan=0,ifname=vnet0 -serial pty -parallel none -usb Supported machines are: pc Standard PC (alias of pc-0.12) pc-0.12 Standard PC (default) pc-0.11 Standard PC, qemu 0.11 pc-0.10 Standard PC, qemu 0.10 isapc ISA-only PC xenpv Xen Para-virtualized PC
And my packages installed:
# rpm -qa | grep qemu qemu-0.12.4-1.el5.rf ^^^ This is your problem. You have an alternative qemu installed. By default, libvirt will use rhel5.4.0 machine type, which is supported by kvm-83-164.el5_5.12 but not supported by upstream qemu (you can see the supported machine types in the log above).
So you have two options: - either use /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm as the emulator - or explicitly change machine type to something which is supported by /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 (e.g., pc-0.12) You can do both in guest XML but I'm not sure if any of these can be done using virt-install. Another option is to use current upstream libvirt since it is able to automatically detect supported machine types and doesn't try to use rhel5.4.0 if the emulator doesn't support it. Jirka