On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 06:03:37PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
Whether the VM starts or not has no relationship to the kernel bug. libguestfs (including virt-rescue) boots its own appliance using the host kernel, which on Ubuntu suffers from this bug.
I might take it up with LKML then, because as you noted earlier the Debian kernel has the problem also, and Debian tends to be a relatively standard build. I'm wondering if perhaps the solution to my problem might be to use virt-manager to 'build' a machine with knoppix and attach it to the target. Or else pregen grub1, grub2 and lilo VM's that can attach to a disk on which grub1, grub2 or lilo needs to be installed to the boot block. I fear it will require at least two VM's because you cannot repair a grub1 host from a grub2 and vice versa.