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SynVirt — Upgrade Notes

Synced read-only from /home/synnet/mirrors/synvirt-product/docs/UPGRADE_NOTES.md. Edit at the source, not here.

SynVirt — Upgrade Notes

Section titled “SynVirt — Upgrade Notes”

Operator-facing notes for upgrading existing SynVirt appliances when a new release introduces a change that the standard binary swap does not fully apply (extra system packages, host-side state migrations, etc.).

New appliances built from the ISO that introduces a change get the upgrade automatically; only previously-installed hosts need the manual steps below.

0.9.0-alpha.2 — SPICE removal (introduced 2026-05-01)

Section titled “0.9.0-alpha.2 — SPICE removal (introduced 2026-05-01)”

SPICE support is removed entirely in 0.9.0-alpha.2. The web console is now VNC-only via noVNC.

Existing VMs continue to run

Section titled “Existing VMs continue to run”

VMs whose domain XML still carries <graphics type='spice'>, <channel type='spicevmc'>, <redirdev bus='usb' type='spicevmc'>, or <video><model type='qxl'/> keep starting under libvirt — these elements are accepted at parse time and QEMU runs the VM. What changes is that the dashboard no longer offers a SPICE console: the only “Open console” button mints a VNC ticket and opens a noVNC session.

If the existing VM does not also carry a VNC listener, that button fails fast with vncdisplay returned no display. Two refresh paths:

  1. Re-define the VM by hand.

    Terminal window
    virsh dumpxml <name> > /tmp/<name>.xml
    # edit /tmp/<name>.xml:
    #   • remove every <graphics type='spice'…>, <channel type='spicevmc'…>,
    #     <redirdev …>, <redirfilter…>
    #   • change <video><model type='qxl' …/> to <model type='virtio'/>
    #     (or 'std-vga' for Win 9x / NT / 2000)
    #   • add <graphics type='vnc' listen='127.0.0.1' port='-1'/>
    virsh define /tmp/<name>.xml
    virsh destroy <name>
    virsh start   <name>

  2. Use the migrator’s video_migration pass.

    The migrator’s video_migration step (run during ingest, also exposed as a one-shot synvirt migrator refresh-video <name>) performs the same transformation idempotently for every VM in the host’s libvirt store. Running it on an upgraded host is the simplest path.

Guest tools

Section titled “Guest tools”

Existing guests with SPICE vdagent / spice-guest-tools installed are fine — those are guest-side packages and uninstalling them is optional. The shipping guest-tools.iso no longer carries spice-guest-tools.exe or spice-vdagent; only the SynVirt agent and virtio-win drivers are staged.

Cleanup of /run/synvirt/spice/

Section titled “Cleanup of /run/synvirt/spice/”

Once every VM is re-defined, the systemd RuntimeDirectory=synvirt/spice declaration on synvirt-daemon.service is dead weight. The 0.9.0-alpha.2 daemon unit drops the directive; systemctl daemon-reload

  • a daemon restart cleans up the empty /run/synvirt/spice/ mount on the next reboot.