Ubuntu

virtual machine vnc does display anything

Asked by norman shen

I am booting a virtual machine from following command line, the iso is official image but might
have been already upgrade upstream...

qemu-system-aarch64 -enable-kvm -smp 4 -m 2048 \
        -machine virt \
        -cpu host \
        -name sjt-test-uos \
        -bios /usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd \
        -device virtio-scsi-pci,id=scsi0 \
        -drive file=./ubuntu-18.04.4-server-arm64.iso,if=none,format=raw,id=iso-cd \
        -device scsi-cd,drive=iso-cd \
        -drive file=./sjt-test.qcow2,if=virtio,cache=writeback,discard=ignore,format=qcow2 \
        -boot order=c \
        -netdev user,id=user.0,hostfwd=tcp::3815-:22 \
        -device e1000,netdev=user.0 \
        -device virtio-gpu-pci \
        -device usb-ehci \
        -device usb-kbd \
        -device usb-mouse \
        -usb \
        -vnc 0.0.0.0:27 \
        -serial stdio

the problem is that virtual machine only outputs to serial console and vnc does not output anything after grub stage.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

What are you wanting to do on the system that needs the full desktop session? There may be a sleeker solution to what you want to achieve....

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

You can use this to check your VNC configuration
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-vnc-on-ubuntu-16-04

But this may not be needed if you can do what you need using an alternative method

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norman shen (jshen28) said (last edit ): 		#3

thank you for reply. after system successfully gets installed, vnc works normally.

right now I am thinking the reason might be installation rootfs does not have a cirrus driver inside (for instance looks like arm
iso ramfs does not include a driver for cdrom, so I have to use scsi-cd instead...)

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#4

Again, why are you using VNC? What will you do on the desktop session once you get connected?

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norman shen (jshen28) said : 		#5

IMO vnc is a basic functionality, for example during installation I would like to see the output..
using vnc I am able to click button and typing some inputs... not sure if this makes sense....

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#6

Output of what? What activities are you wanting to do when you connect via VNC?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#7

Installation of what?

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norman shen (jshen28) said : 		#8

I am trying to install ubuntu through iso. so of course installation of ubuntu if this is your question...
during installation, I would like to interact with installation guide so that I can input username, password, disk partition, etc...

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#9

But you would need to have some sort of access to the system to setup the OS...so why not just do the OS install rather than configure VNC to then do the OS installation. Note that the settings in the installer desktop are not transferred to the installed OS so you'd need to do it all over again.....

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norman shen (jshen28) said : 		#10

hmm. Actually I am not trying to install vnc in vm... I am using qemu's vnc which is similar to a monitor, such that I can see the whole installation steps...

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#11

Does this help
https://www.how2shout.com/linux/how-to-install-qemu-kvm-and-virt-manager-gui-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts/

Can you help with this problem?

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