[virt-tools-list] virt-install "Validating install media failed"

[Henry Cheng]

Thanks, Peter.

Your advice did the trick.  And your comment "You're already very close to
a working solution." gave me hope when I first read it. :-)

For those that stumble upon this thread in the future, here the final
command line:


virt-install --name=win10 \
--ram=4096 \
--cpu=host \
--vcpus=3 \
--os-type=windows \
--os-variant=win10 \
--disk path=/home/bill/win10.img,bus=virtio \
--disk path=/home/bill/virtio-win-0.1.172.iso,device=cdrom \
--cdrom /home/bill/win10.iso \
--network bridge=br0,model=virtio \
--graphics vnc,listen=0.0.0.0,port=5901










On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 2:56 AM Peter Crowther <peter.crowther at melandra.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Sep 2019, 17:36 Henry Cheng, <hbc2048 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm having trouble getting a vm going.  (This is my first time ever.  I
> believe I have kvm/qemu + virt-manager tools installed correctly.)
>
> Welcome to the list, and welcome to virt-install's "interesting"
> differences in parameter parsing depending on which parameter you use!
>  You're already very close to a working solution.
>
> > ERROR    Validating install media '/home/bill/win10.iso,bus=ide' failed:
> Must specify storage creation parameters for non-existent path
> '/home/bill/win10.iso,bus=ide'.
> > I'm not sure what " non-existent path " means below because i know that
> file exists at that path.
>
> ... tells you that there's not a file at the path
> '/home/bill/win10.iso,bus=ide'.  There probably isn't, though I
> suspect there's one at  '/home/bill/win10.iso' ;-).  virt-install is
> parsing everything after the = as a path, because --cdrom doesn't take
> key=value parameters (unlike --disk).  Everything in the argument is
> assumed to be part of the path.
>
> So you could either use simply:
>   --cdrom=/home/bill/win10.iso,
> or a --disk parameter that allows you to pass options...
> >    --disk /home/bill/win10.iso,device=cdrom,bus=ide   <<< this one
> gives:  "An install method must be specified"
>
> ... which you did.  This has worked, so you've moved on to a different
> problem: virt-install can't guess what to boot from (in this case,
> which of two cdrom devices), so is asking you to specify via --boot.
> I'm not sure how to specify this for two CDROM drives (I use floppy =
> CDROM for my Windows installs, see below).  You *might* be able to
> specify --boot cdrom, or you might need to do more work, or it might
> depend on your virt-install version.
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Peter
>
> == ADDENDA ==
>
> > (Also, I am doing this on a headless server so using the gui
> virt-manager isn't an option.)
>
> Assuming your headless server is a UNIX box of some kind, you can
> always install enough of X11 that you can run virt-manager with the
> display on a window on the machine from which you're remoting into the
> server.  Talk to me off-list if you want more details; I routinely run
> virt-manager on our headless servers from my Windows desktop box.
>
> > This is what I a getting when I try to create the vm.
> > $ virt-install --name=win10 \
> > > --disk path=/home/bill/win10.img,bus=virtio \
> > > --cdrom=/home/bill/win10.iso,bus=ide \
> > > --disk path=/home/bill/virtio-win-0.1.172.iso,device=cdrom,bus=ide \
>
> OK, you're going for the dual-CDROM approach to adding the Windows
> drivers.  I've not tried that, so can't comment on how well it works.
> I still use the floppy image and a single CDROM image (and a SATA
> rather than IDE bus, though that shouldn't make a difference):
>
>     --disk=device=floppy,path=/path/to/floppy.img \
>     --disk=device=cdrom,bus=sata,perms=ro,path=/path/to/image.iso \
>
> Just as a side note, I suspect you'll eventually want to add
> ",model=virtio" to your network line, so that you use the (fast)
> virtio driver there as well, rather than whatever default virt-install
> gives you for Windows 10.
>
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