windows 7 as kvm guest installation with virtio drivers - detected virtio scsi disk shows wrong capacity

Question

I am trying to install windows 7 64bit as a kvm guest. I read here that I should install the virtio scsi driver during installation.

I use virt-install to start my installation from the command line

virt-install --connect qemu:///system \
    --name win7vnc --ram 2048 --vcpus=2 --cpuset=auto \
    --disk path=win7.img,bus=virtio 
    --network=network=default,model=virtio,mac=RANDOM 
    --graphics vnc,port=5900 
    --disk device=cdrom,path=../../isos/virtio-win-0.1-81.iso  
    --disk device=cdrom,path=../../isos/win7_sp1_ult_64bit/Windows\ 7\ SP1\ Ultimate\ \(64\ Bit\).iso 
    --os-type=windows --os-variant=win7 --boot cdrom,hd

The installation start fine and as expected windows do not detect a hard disk. So I load driver and the disk is indeed detected. The problem is it only has 99MB capacity, while I created the disk to be 100GB with the command

qemu-img create -f qcow2 win7.img 100G

what could be wrong and the capacity is not correct?

EDIT: picture of the problem

enter image description here

Does your virtual disk already have a partition table on it? Use DISKPART to erase it. — Michael Hampton, Sep 25 '14 at 18:11
@MichaelHampton hi there! could you please elaborate on DISKPART abit ? (invocation, usage, etc) because I cannot find any info on diskpart wrt kvm. thanks — nass, Sep 25 '14 at 22:45
there seems to be NO more space. really. `DISKPART` shows the same please see the added image — nass, Sep 26 '14 at 10:44
hm ok I found a solution. I start the installation by suggesting size and format for the disk image. — nass, Sep 26 '14 at 11:59
@MichaelHampton hi there, can I get your input to yet another problem I am facing with KVM and mostly internet access of the guest. The question is here http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/158077/no-internet-connection-for-a-kvm-guest-what-could-be-wrong/158083#158083 , but I would like to discuss it in chat room if possible. — nass, Sep 28 '14 at 22:34

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 26 '14 at 17:05

in the end, i set disk settings as if I will create a new disk at the time the virt-install command is run, even though I have a disk image ready in advance. so I run:

virt-install --connect qemu:///system \
    --name win7vnc --ram 2048 --vcpus=2 --cpuset=auto \
    --disk path=win7.img,bus=virtio,size=100,format=qcow2 \
    --network=network=default,model=virtio,mac=RANDOM \
    --graphics vnc,port=5900
    --disk device=cdrom,path=../../isos/virtio-win-0.1-81.iso \
    --disk device=cdrom,path=../../isos/win7_sp1_ult_64bit/Windows\ 7\ SP1\ Ultimate\ \(64\ Bit\).iso \
    --os-type=windows --os-variant=win7 --boot cdrom,hd

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '15 at 19:40

i have written a little shell script to automate installation of Windows 7 in KVM that works for Ubuntu Linux 12.04 as host system:

http://torsten-traenkner.de/linux/create_virtual_machine_with_windows_7.sh.tgz

With a little video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwHmdAWkbx4

The script creates a sparse file as a raw disk image. This has the advantage that the virtual disk does not use the complete real disk space at once and that you can mount the raw image easily. If the script does not work for your Linux distribution you can look inside the script to see how it's done.

dd if=/dev/zero of="$DISK_IMAGE_NAME" bs=1 count=0 seek="$virtualMachineSizeInGB"G > /dev/null 2>&1

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 14 '15 at 04:12

-1

I wrote up my experience here:

http://www.returnbooleantrue.com/2015/04/making-your-windows-kvm-guest-boxes-fly.html

You can certainly add VirtIO after you finish installing windows.

answered Apr 14 '15 at 04:12

Jeff T

101
1

1

Instead of just linking to your site you should add the main solution to you answer. Then, you can add your blog as a reference. – Esa Jokinen Apr 14 '15 at 06:41

windows 7 as kvm guest installation with virtio drivers - detected virtio scsi disk shows wrong capacity

3 Answers3