Re: [libvirt] virtio network problems with kvm guests with 2.6.26 kernel

Hi, After upgrading libvirt on one system, my kvm guests running a 2.6.26 kernel with virtio networking could no longer communicate with the network. It seems that the problem is caused by newer libvirt versions unconditionally enabling GSO support by setting IFF_VNET_HDR [1]. However, support for this feature is apparently broken in 2.6.26. Ubuntu seems to have also discovered this problem [2] and they currently work around it by removing GSO support from kvm [3]. Currently, I'm running with a patched libvirt that never sets IFF_VNET_HDR, and it's working fine once again. While this is not a libvirt problem per se, it certainly violated the principle of least surprise given that libvirt was the only thing that changed! But I don't know if there's much that libvirt can do to avoid this problem, as it's really something that needs to get fixed in kvm, or the guest needs to be upgraded, or switched away from virtio.