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Looking Glass IVSHEM - QEMU unexpectedly closed the monitor

Error

Error shown is similar to this:

"Error starting domain: internal error: qemu unexpectedly closed the monitor: ####-##-##T##:##:##.####### qemu-system-x86_64: backing store size 0x2000000 does not match 'size' option 0x4000000"

This is seen when changing the VM 'shmem' configuration within the VM configuration to any other value.

This change is documented in the Looking Glass docs here

Example change

Changing from:

    <shmem name="looking-glass">
      <model type="ivshmem-plain"/>
      <size unit="M">32</size>
      <address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x10" slot="0x01" function="0x0"/>
    </shmem>

    <shmem name="looking-glass">
      <model type="ivshmem-plain"/>
      <size unit="M">128</size>
      <address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x10" slot="0x01" function="0x0"/>
    </shmem>

Solution

To solve this problem, and to start the VM without any problems, you must remove the current value inside of /dev/shm/looking-glass.

rm /dev/shm/looking-glass

You are now able to change the <size unit="M">xxx</size> value to the value for your display resolution, as documented in the Looking Glass docs.