Hi all,

I noticed in the source code for LibvirtDriver that there is already a statement put in to use cache=writethrough for nova-compute users using glusterfs. For some reason, my configuration isn't catching it and it's causing kvm to not able to load the VM.

root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# cat libvirt.xml 
<domain type="kvm">
  <uuid>648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24</uuid>
  <name>instance-0000002c</name>
  <memory>2097152</memory>
  <vcpu>1</vcpu>
  <sysinfo type="smbios">
    <system>
      <entry name="manufacturer">OpenStack Foundation</entry>
      <entry name="product">OpenStack Nova</entry>
      <entry name="version">2013.1</entry>
      <entry name="serial">0bd50aa7-214c-fe5b-662c-0025902d7f96</entry>
      <entry name="uuid">648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24</entry>
    </system>
  </sysinfo>
  <os>
    <type>hvm</type>
    <boot dev="hd"/>
    <smbios mode="sysinfo"/>
  </os>
  <features>
    <acpi/>
    <apic/>
  </features>
  <clock offset="utc">
    <timer name="pit" tickpolicy="delay"/>
    <timer name="rtc" tickpolicy="catchup"/>
  </clock>
  <cpu mode="host-model" match="exact"/>
  <devices>
    <disk type="file" device="cdrom">
      <driver name="qemu" type="qcow2" cache="none"/>
      <source file="/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24/disk"/>
      <target bus="ide" dev="hda"/>
    </disk>
    <disk type="file" device="disk">
      <driver name="qemu" type="raw" cache="none"/>
      <source file="/var/lib/nova/mnt/6408bb2f62fd5c6a9277a4fcfd55f3a6/volume-4bc652a3-97ea-44a2-b12a-1e38993010a3"/>
      <target bus="virtio" dev="vda"/>
      <serial>4bc652a3-97ea-44a2-b12a-1e38993010a3</serial>
    </disk>
    <interface type="bridge">
      <mac address="fa:16:3e:64:a2:0a"/>
      <model type="virtio"/>
      <source bridge="br100"/>
      <filterref filter="nova-instance-instance-0000002c-fa163e64a20a"/>
    </interface>
    <serial type="file">
      <source path="/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24/console.log"/>
    </serial>
    <serial type="pty"/>
    <input type="tablet" bus="usb"/>
    <graphics type="vnc" autoport="yes" keymap="en-us" listen="10.16.201.1"/>
  </devices>
</domain>

Here's me manually trying to start the VM using that xml file.

root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# virsh define libvirt.xml 
Domain instance-0000002c defined from libvirt.xml

root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# virsh start instance-0000002c
error: Failed to start domain instance-0000002c
error: Unable to read from monitor: Connection reset by peer

After I change it to writethrough, it works fine:

root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# sed -i 's/cache="none"/cache="writethrough"/g' libvirt.xml 
root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# virsh define libvirt.xml 
Domain instance-0000002c defined from libvirt.xml

root@lab1:/var/lib/nova/instances/648d9178-3099-466e-861e-0476b3e0aa24# virsh start instance-0000002c
Domain instance-0000002c started

Does anyone know why it isn't catching that I'm using GlusterFS becaues it carely says it would in the source code?

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/nova/virt/libvirt/driver.py

    def disk_cachemode(self):
        if self._disk_cachemode is None:
            # We prefer 'none' for consistent performance, host crash
            # safety & migration correctness by avoiding host page cache.
            # Some filesystems (eg GlusterFS via FUSE) don't support
            # O_DIRECT though. For those we fallback to 'writethrough'
            # which gives host crash safety, and is safe for migration
            # provided the filesystem is cache coherant (cluster filesystems
            # typically are, but things like NFS are not).
            self._disk_cachemode = "none"
            if not self._supports_direct_io(CONF.instances_path):
                self._disk_cachemode = "writethrough"
        return self._disk_cachemode