Linux KVM: OpenBSD Guest Hangs At Starting tty Flags

OpenBSD version 4.5 and above made changes in kernel which prevents booting OpenBSD using KVM technology. OpenBSD 4.4 runs with mbbios enabled. However, due to some sort of bug in KVM it does not boot and hangs while displaying a message which read as “Starting tty flags”. The workaround is to disable mpbios. This may or may not happen with your installation, but if it hanged, use the following procedure.

Step # 1: Boot OpenBSD With -c Option

At boot> prompt type the following command:

bsd -c
disable mpbios
quit

Sample session:

Fig.01: OpenBSD KVM Hangs at setting tty flags workaround

Now OpenBSD will boot without any problem. Login as root and type the following command to disable mpbios permanently:

# config -ef /bsd
disable mpbios
quit

Sample session:

Fig.02: Disabling mpbios for OpenBSD running under Linux KVM

Now you can use OpenBSD without any problem. Please note that this problem only occured under RHEL 5.5 64bit (KVM83) running OpenBSD 4.7 64bit guest. The config command can be used to build kernel compilation directories or modify a kernel. In this case you’ve modified the kernel to boot without mpbios support. The mpbios driver extracts configuration information from the BIOS on multiprocessor systems that conform to the Intel MultiProcessor Specification. See config and mpbios man page for further information.