Tag: grub

Posted on

Getting a kvm serial console with grub2

I’ve a few kvm guest servers, which I’ve been accessing using vnc – but this is a bit of a pain (getting port forwarding setup etc). Host and guests run Debian Squeeze with Grub2 installed/in use.

So, here’s how to do the ‘virsh console ‘ thing …

  1. Edit /etc/default/grub, specify 
    GRUB_TERMINAL=console 
GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="text console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8"
  2. Run update-grub
  3. Edit /etc/inittab and enable ttyS0 for logins.
  4. Reboot
  5. ‘virsh console servername’ on the kvm host.

The libvirt config files I have already have the appropriate bits in them –

<serial type='pty'><target port='0'/></serial>
<console type='pty'><target type='serial' port='0'/></console>