VM snapshot with OVMF/UEFI firmware

Tchuyev · July 30, 2018, 9:27am

How do you perform a live VM snapshot - and revert back to a specific state - from the CLI or VirtManager when using an UEFI virtual machine?

$ virsh snapshot-create-as --domain myvm --name “snap-30jul2018” --description “Snapshot” --live

error: Operation not supported: live snapshot creation is supported only with external checkpoints

The following command would work…
$ virsh snapshot-create-as --domain myvm --name “snap-30jul2018” --description “Snapshot” --disk-only

… but impossible to revert back to a previous state:
$ virsh snapshot-revert --domain myvm --snapshotname snap-30jul2018 --running

error: unsupported configuration: revert to external snapshot not supported yet

I’ve tried with Ubuntu 18.04 and Arch Linux both using latest versions of KVM/QEMU, same problem!!

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks

tkoham · July 30, 2018, 6:47pm

This is currently a broken feature in virtman. No telling when it will be functional. You have to use outside tools if you want to snapshot.

we do, however, have a good tutorial on setting up a zfs vdev to do live snapshots over on our VFIO wiki

The VFIO and Passthrough One Stop Shop Wikis & How-to Guides

Seems like we get a new thread almost every day with people having the same problems setting up a passthrough VM. The Purpose of this Wiki is to be a resource and reference for people who want to set up a VFIO system, or have one already and need advice or Tutorials for the various facets of that system. I will be adding categories like ‘input’ ‘screens’ etc – these can be expanded as necessary. Basic Setup Guides on setting up a passthrough VM The archwiki guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF This is the gold standard in passthrough setup tutorials. It is by and large the most complete, best maintained, and most accurate reference available. The vast majority of the information is completely distro agnostic, with the single caveat being mkinipcio being distro specific (dracut on fedora etc) This should always be your first reference. Explainers/Benchmarks Information on various ill documented or not-oft-explained aspects of VFIO. Benchmarks should also be put here as the effectiveness of many commonly suggested tweaks are not very well characterized. Hardware buying and quirk guide: https://passthroughpo.st/vfio-increments/ Input resources for people looking for keyboard/mouse input sharing solutions or other input-related topics. Storage Information on best practices for images, VirtIO, etc. Display/GPU VFIO Topics pertaining to your VM’s display, native or otherwise. Audio VM audio resources. Distro Specific Apparmor, distro specific software, issues, and workarounds. Tools and Projects Software that enhances the VFIO experience, or VFIO use cases outside of GPU passthrough https://looking-glass.hostfission.com/ This is a tool that allows users to take advantage of KVMFR, using 3d accelerated VMs without needing a native display