Debian Bug report logs - #467043
New kvm causes Windows activation to trigger on activated VM - now hardware ids?

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Majer <adamm@zombino.com>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: New CPU and machine ID break window activation from older qemu

Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:18:36 -0600

Package: qemu
Version: 0.9.1-1
Severity: important

I know people don't really care about Windows or Microsoft here, but
some of us still require to run Windows for some tasks (like VS). qemu
works with Windows XP very nicely. It is extremely good for testing as
well as well. For example, I had the following,

 1. install one XP instance
 2. activate it
 3. copy it to create a VM for some application, testing, etc.

This worked beautifully until the recent changes in qemu renamed all
hardware! For example, now the CPU is identified as "QEMU Virtual CPU
version 0.9.0-cvs" instead of old one. This completely breaks Window
activation of my currently installed VM.

The solution as I see it is to,

 * add a switch to qemu to allow for old hardware ids.
 * have a *consistent* virtual names for the future instead of the
   "every version of qemu gets a new CPU version"

Or just reverting to the old way of identifying the machine would be
good enough.

- Adam

PS. The importance of this bug is severity grave for all unfortunate
Windows users out there that prefer to running Windows in a VM than natively!


-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (900, 'unstable'), (5, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.23-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages qemu depends on:
ii  bochsbios          2.3.6-2               BIOS for the Bochs emulator
ii  libasound2         1.0.15-3              ALSA library
ii  libc6              2.7-6                 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgnutls13        2.0.4-1               the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libncurses5        5.6+20080119-1        Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libsdl1.2debian    1.2.13-1              Simple DirectMedia Layer
ii  openbios-sparc     1.0~alpha2+20080106-2 SPARC Open Firmware
ii  openhackware       0.4.1-3               OpenFirmware emulator for PowerPC
ii  proll              18-3                  JavaStation PROM 2.x compatible re
ii  vgabios            0.6a-3                VGA BIOS software for the Bochs an
ii  zlib1g             1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-11     compression library - runtime

Versions of packages qemu recommends:
ii  debootstrap              1.0.8           Bootstrap a basic Debian system
ii  sharutils                1:4.6.3-1       shar, unshar, uuencode, uudecode
ii  vde2                     2.1.6+r154-1+b1 Virtual Distributed Ethernet

-- no debconf information

Message #10 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Majer <adamm@zombino.com>

To: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: New CPU and machine ID break window activation from older qemu

Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:48:17 -0600

reassign 467043 kvm 60+dfsg-1
thanks

Sorry, wrong package! After testing all combinations the problem is with
kvm_58+dfsg-2_i386.deb to kvm_60+dfsg-1_i386.deb upgrade. kvm 58 => 60
breaks stuff, not qemu.

Reassigning bug.

- Adam

PS. Since KVM is for full machine virtualization, which is most useful
for Windows, maybe this bug is more serious than important? I know that
for me it is grave and makes kvm 60+ unusable.

I am willing to test any changes that may correct this issue.

Message #17 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Majer <adamm@zombino.com>

To: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: New CPU and machine ID break window activation from older qemu

Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:51:18 -0600

As an added note, I was only required to downgrade the kvm package. The
kernel module is using the vsersion 60 kvm stuff without problems.

- Adam

Message #26 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Riku Voipio <riku.voipio@iki.fi>

To: Adam Majer <adamm@zombino.com>, 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#467043: New CPU and machine ID break window activation from older qemu

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:41:42 +0200

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 11:48:17AM -0600, Adam Majer wrote:
> PS. Since KVM is for full machine virtualization, which is most useful
> for Windows, maybe this bug is more serious than important? I know that
> for me it is grave and makes kvm 60+ unusable.

ps. since it's a obviously a upstream issue, how about communicating
directly with them?


-- 
"rm -rf" only sounds scary if you don't have backups

Message #31 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Majer <adamm@zombino.com>

To: Riku Voipio <riku.voipio@iki.fi>

Cc: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#467043: New CPU and machine ID break window activation from older qemu

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:06:46 -0600

Riku Voipio wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 11:48:17AM -0600, Adam Majer wrote:
>> PS. Since KVM is for full machine virtualization, which is most useful
>> for Windows, maybe this bug is more serious than important? I know that
>> for me it is grave and makes kvm 60+ unusable.
> 
> ps. since it's a obviously a upstream issue, how about communicating
> directly with them?

Thanks for your sarcastic reply. Make sure you do that for ALL your
users. Thanks again.

Need I remind you that,

 1. one of the jobs of Debian maintainers to to relay at least *some*
important regressions to upstream as Debian maintainers generally have
better communication with them than some average user.

 2. BTS is for more than *you* to provide sarcastic remarks to users. It
 is there also for other *users* to know what regressions software has
and what they can do about it. This is by far the most useful part of
the BTS as a quick skim of affected packages allows the more advanced
user to diagnose the cause and reasonably quickly provide a workaround.

- Adam

Message #36 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jan Niehusmann <jan@gondor.com>

To: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#467043: New kvm causes Windows activation to trigger on activated VM - now hardware ids?

Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:40:46 +0100

I agree that this change of version strings is annoying for people
running Windows VMs. But I'm not sure if it's really important: You can
always reactivate your copy of windows. After all, that's quite similar
to a hardware upgrade triggering windows activation.

So shouldn't this be a wishlist bug?

When fixing this bug (and I agree with Adam that some command line option
to allow for old hardware ids would be nice), please consider other
changes which may trigger activation as well. E.g. with kvm 58, the
identification string for the optical drive changed from QEMU CD-ROM to
QEMU DVD-ROM, which triggered activation on my windows VM.

Here is the patch I currently use to make switching between old and new
versions of kvm possible without repetitive reactivation actions. It's
of course not suitable for the debian package, as it changes the version
strings unconditionally, but perhaps it helps people like Adam who
currently can't upgrade to a recent kvm version because of this issue:


diff --git a/qemu/VERSION b/qemu/VERSION
index f514a2f..ac39a10 100644
--- a/qemu/VERSION
+++ b/qemu/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.9.1
\ No newline at end of file
+0.9.0
diff --git a/qemu/hw/ide.c b/qemu/hw/ide.c
index 5c21a8b..2e19ed7 100644
--- a/qemu/hw/ide.c
+++ b/qemu/hw/ide.c
@@ -592,7 +592,7 @@ static void ide_atapi_identify(IDEState *s)
     put_le16(p + 21, 512); /* cache size in sectors */
     put_le16(p + 22, 4); /* ecc bytes */
     padstr((char *)(p + 23), QEMU_VERSION, 8); /* firmware version */
-    padstr((char *)(p + 27), "QEMU DVD-ROM", 40); /* model */
+    padstr((char *)(p + 27), "QEMU CD-ROM", 40); /* model */
     put_le16(p + 48, 1); /* dword I/O (XXX: should not be set on CDROM) */
 #ifdef USE_DMA_CDROM
     put_le16(p + 49, 1 << 9 | 1 << 8); /* DMA and LBA supported */
@@ -1702,7 +1702,7 @@ static void ide_atapi_cmd(IDEState *s)
         buf[6] = 0; /* reserved */
         buf[7] = 0; /* reserved */
         padstr8(buf + 8, 8, "QEMU");
-        padstr8(buf + 16, 16, "QEMU DVD-ROM");
+        padstr8(buf + 16, 16, "QEMU CD-ROM");
         padstr8(buf + 32, 4, QEMU_VERSION);
         ide_atapi_cmd_reply(s, 36, max_len);
         break;

Message #41 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Orion <orion@frondeg.co.uk>

To: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#467043: New kvm causes Windows activation to trigger on activated VM - now hardware ids?

Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:37:28 +0100

Hi

I think Jan is right that this can only really be a wishlist bug as
it's merely a request for a new feature. The program isn't currently
behaving in any manner that wasn't originally intended. 

I'm no expert on Windows, but doesn't Microsoft apply some limitations
on product activation that could make it problematic if it's activated
too often? It seems to me that the scheme would be worthless without
such limits. If this is true, then this issue might be more serious
than it appears on the surface when using modern versions of Windows
inside KVM and other PC emulators

Regards,

Orion

Message #48 received at 467043@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Toni Mueller <support@oeko.net>

To: 467043@bugs.debian.org

Cc: support@oeko.net

Subject: Windows activation

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:07:04 +0200

Hi Orion,

yes, Windows activation is somewhat restricted, and, maybe worse, may
fail if M$ decided that your serial has leaked. So, repeated activation
attempts are prone to get you at least one of

 * raids on your home, for alleged software pirating
 * a non-working vm, because reactivation failed, because your serial
   was blacklisted.

Therefore, I dislike the idea of downgrading this bug to "wishlist".

Instead, I'd probably like to see some sort of device id profile, so I
can upgrade kvm and keep any set of "old ids" around that I once used
to install windows, if I want to. If this were possible, it would
decouple the used ids from the kvm version completely.


Kind regards,
--Toni++

Message #53 received at 467043-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Marco Rodrigues <gothicx@sapo.pt>

To: 467043-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Package kvm has been removed from Debian

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:47:07 +0000

Version: 85+dfsg-4.1+rm

You filled the bug http://bugs.debian.org/467043 in Debian BTS
against the package kvm. I'm closing it at *unstable*, but it will
remain open for older distributions.

For more information about this package's removal, read
http://bugs.debian.org/562620. That bug might give the reasons why
this package was removed and suggestions of possible replacements.

Don't hesitate to reply to this mail if you have any question.

Thank you for your contribution to Debian.

--
Marco Rodrigues

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