journal contains errors on each service restart "keyword is not comprised only of uppercase ASCII letters or digits"

Bug #1990949 reported by Christian Ehrhardt 
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
libvirt (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Low
Unassigned
Jammy
Won't Fix
Low
Unassigned
Kinetic
Fix Released
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Some systems have been reported to emit errors to the log on each libvirtd restart.
An example is:

libvirtd[15231]: internal error: The keyword is not comprised only of uppercase ASCII letters or digits
libvirtd[15231]: internal error: A field data length violates the resource length boundary.
...

Such messages can almost always safely be ignored.
It almost always points to device/firmware reporting invalid VPD data.

Libvirt is ok to stumble over this, but maybe reporting it as an error is too much.

Note:
If you are affected and you wonder which device is causing this you might run the following:

$ for i in $(sudo find /sys -name '*vpd' | awk -F '/' '{gsub(":","_"); gsub("\\.","_"); print $6}'); do virsh nodedev-dumpxml pci_${i} | grep -q "capability type='vpd'" || echo "device ${i} has invalid VPD data"; done
device 0000_02_00_2 has invalid VPD data
device 0000_02_00_0 has invalid VPD data
device 0000_02_00_3 has invalid VPD data
device 0000_02_00_1 has invalid VPD data

So in my case I've found 4 entries being broken, and when looking into those they are 4 functions of the same device which is the one with the bad firmware.

If you can check if updating the firmware fixes the issue for good.

Related branches

Changed in libvirt (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Low
Revision history for this message
Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer) wrote :

While inconvenient the importance is not very high.
I think we want to fix it upstream and in the future, but not backport it to active releases.
But I'm happy to be convinced otherwise ...

I'm starting to suggest a fix to upstream anyway to have a discussion on it.
=> https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2022-September/234517.html

Revision history for this message
Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer) wrote :

This got a +1 upstream, but being a non-apparmor change I'm waiting for it to land by someone else. Either way - this will conclude - but as outlined above isn't important (unless someone comes up with a case that bumps up severity). So we will only take this in as part of the normal 23.04 merge.

Changed in libvirt (Ubuntu Jammy):
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Won't Fix
tags: added: libvirt-23.04
Revision history for this message
Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer) wrote :

I was driving a kinetic upload anyway and it is upstream accepted.
So why not adding it on top, it is now part of MP:
https://code.launchpad.net/~paelzer/ubuntu/+source/libvirt/+git/libvirt/+merge/430946

Revision history for this message
Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer) wrote :

FYI - uploaded to kinetic

Changed in libvirt (Ubuntu Kinetic):
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package libvirt - 8.6.0-0ubuntu3

---------------
libvirt (8.6.0-0ubuntu3) kinetic; urgency=medium

  * d/p/u/lp-1990499-virt-aa-helper-allow-common-riscv64-loader-paths.patch:
    easen the use of riscv64 through libvirt (LP: #1990499)
  * d/p/u/lp-1990949-virpcivpd-reduce-errors-in-log-due-to-invalid-VPD.patch:
    reduce log noise by invalid VPD data (LP: #1990949)

 -- Christian Ehrhardt <email address hidden> Tue, 04 Oct 2022 08:29:46 +0200

Changed in libvirt (Ubuntu Kinetic):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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