Live migration fails with "Missing section footer for 0000:00:01.3/piix4_pm"

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Virtualization 4.4 SP1
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6
      • qemu-kvm-core-6.2.0-11.module+el8.6.0+20793+2184cc28.11.x86_64
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM 8.6, 8.7, 8.8 and 8.9
  • Virtual Machine with i440FX Machine Type

Issue

  • Migrating a Virtual Machine fails on the destination:
2024-01-29T19:35:48.187188Z qemu-kvm: Missing section footer for 0000:00:01.3/piix4_pm
2024-01-29T19:35:48.187495Z qemu-kvm: load of migration failed: Invalid argument

Resolution

  • If the migration source host is RHEL 8.5 or older, this is caused by a bug on the destination hypervisor. To correct the problem a package upgrade is required:

    • It is already fixed in RHEL 8.8 by RHSA-2024:0569
    • For RHV users, fix is backported to RHEL 8.6 - qemu-kvm-6.2.0-11.module+el8.6.0+21121+f1d2ec3c.12.x86_64 - RHBA-2024:1120.

  • If the migration source host is RHEL 8.6, this is caused by a bug on the source hypervisor that has been present since 8.6 GA. In this case it is recommended to upgrade qemu-kvm to the latest version once the fix above is released and shutdown and restart the VMs on the upgraded hosts.

  • For workarounds in the case of source RHEL 8.6 host, downgrading qemu-kvm package downgrades may help. However, this will just buy time, the VMs need a fresh start on the latest version to really solve the problem. The affected RHEL 8.6 versions can migrate VMs between themselves, but not to the fixed latest versions.

Root Cause

Diagnostic Steps

  • On the destination hypervisor, confirm the machine type if i440fx and the relevant error:
# egrep 'machine|footer' /var/log/libvirt/qemu/<VM NAME HERE>.log 
-machine pc-i440fx-rhel7.6.0,usb=off,dump-guest-core=off \
2024-01-31T04:04:30.027368Z qemu-kvm: Missing section footer for 0000:00:01.3/piix4_pm
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