Does not work on Ubuntu 18.04

[SeanKnight]

Found this line in the logs:

INFO[0073] [hostagent] time="2021-10-11T16:13:13-07:00" level=fatal msg="failed to run [/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -M none -netdev help]: stdout=\"\", stderr=\"Possible accelerators: kvm, xen, hax, tcg\\nqemu-system-x86_64: -netdev help: Parameter 'id' is missing\\n\""

If I upgrade the system from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 then rancher-desktop starts working. It would be nice for 18.04 to work since that version is still has supported until April 2023, and I have several teammates that use 18.04 who can not upgrade.

Ubuntu 18.04 has qemu 2.11.1, and Ubuntu 20.04 has qemu 4.2.1. Perhaps some command line flags changed between the versions?

[AkihiroSuda]

qemu/qemu@547203e (net: List available netdevs with "-netdev help")

Seems QEMU needs to be v2.12 or later

[mattfarina]

Thanks for sharing. We'll need to look further into this. On Mac we are able to easily bundle qemu but on Linux we went with the system packages. We'll have to see if there is a way around older system qemu issues.

[davidcassany]

This is a tricky issue, as the command line being used nowadays already includes some deprecated flags for the latest QEMU release (v6.1.0). So I believe it might not be that simple finding a static QEMU command that is functional from v2.11.1 to v6.1.0. I'd say either different packaging strategy is needed (to embed qemu) or some extra QEMU version dependent logic is required to dynamically generate the appropriate QEMU arguments.

[simonflood]

On Ubuntu 18.04 you can add a third-party PPA which provides QEMU 2.12 - see https://launchpad.net/~jacob/+archive/ubuntu/virtualisation?field.series_filter=bionic

Once I did this the Rancher Desktop seemed to work! :-)

[simonflood]

Damn commented too soon, now seeing Error Starting Kubernetes pop-up.

[simonflood]

After a Factory Reset and selecting Kubernetes version v1.21.5 Rancher Desktop downloads Kubernetes, checks k3s images, and does something else quickly then the error pops up.

background.log:
current-port: 6443
Kubernetes was unable to start: Error: /opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1
at ChildProcess. (/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/app.asar/dist/app/background.js:1:7901)
at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:315:20)
at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:277:12)

lima.log:
level=info msg="Terminal is not available, proceeding without opening an editor"
time="2021-10-13T11:58:08+01:00" level=info msg="Attempting to download the image from "/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/alpine-lima-v0.1.8-rd-3.13.5.iso""
time="2021-10-13T11:58:09+01:00" level=fatal msg="failed to download the image, attempted 1 candidates, errors=[failed to download "/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/alpine-lima-v0.1.8-rd-3.13.5.iso": userspace copy failed: %!w()]"

• limactl start --tty=false /home/simonf/.local/share/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/0.yaml
  Error: /opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1
  at ChildProcess. (/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/app.asar/dist/app/background.js:1:7901)
  at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:315:20)
  at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:277:12)
  Error starting lima: Error: /opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1
  at ChildProcess. (/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/app.asar/dist/app/background.js:1:7901)
  at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:315:20)
  at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:277:12)

[AkihiroSuda]

time="2021-10-13T11:58:09+01:00" level=fatal msg="failed to download the image, attempted 1 candidates, errors=[failed to download "/opt/Rancher Desktop/resources/resources/linux/alpine-lima-v0.1.8-rd-3.13.5.iso": userspace copy failed: %!w()]"

Should be fixed in containerd/continuity#187

[jandubois]

Sorry, I didn't update the issue last night, but it looks like I got Lima working on Bionic:

jan@ubuntu:~$ grep PRETTY /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS"
jan@ubuntu:~$ lima grep PRETTY /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 21.04"

There were 3 changes I had to make:

• Don't fail if -netdev help is not implemented.
• Check stderr for -accel help output when stdout is empty.
• Don't change ciphers when OpenSSH is older than 8.0.0 (this Lima change may not be in RD 0.6.0)

I still have to clean up the patch, so that the code checking openssh features doesn't happen before logging is initialized.

[jandubois]

Fixed by lima-vm/lima#331.