Re: [win-pv-devel] Problems with network using 8.2.0.x on Windows 2012R2 and Xen 4.8.1-pre

[Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
[snip]
> 
> Hi,
> I've been using xen for a number of years with a dozen windows 2012R2
> servers, and have been using one of the ejb drivers. I'm not upgrading
> to a new version of Xen from Debian testing packages, and having some
> problems to get the network interface working reliably. To get to this
> point, I've followed these steps:
> 1) snapshot the VM drive
> 2) boot the VM on the new xen platform
> 3) allow windows to fail to boot (can't find the HDD), boot into
> recovery menu
> 4) Boot into safe mode, uninstall the old drivers using an old uninstall
> script for GPLPV v10
> 5) Install the new 8.2.0.x drivers
> 6) Reboot after all drivers are installed
> 7) Everything works, except the network card which has the yellow ! mark
> in device manager
> 
> After numerous attempts to fix this, I can see the following "minimal"
> steps will give a working device (until the next reboot):
> 1) Disable the non-working device
> 2) Enable the device
> Now, everything works as normal, but as noted, after a reboot it fails
> to start again.
> 
> I've managed to enable debugging, and capture the bootup process, then
> below that is the log of what happens when I disable, and then enable
> the device. Apologies, but I've trimmed the logs to what I hope is the
> required information, please let me know if you need more.
> 

Hi Adam,

  Your problem is this:

3677@1493170121.472062:xen_platform_log xen platform: 
XENBUS|GnttabExpand: fail1 (c000009a)

  Something has swallowed most of your grant table. I suspect it is your 
storage interface... Unfortunately blkback has some rather bad defaults and you 
end up using multiple queues, with multiple pages per queue, and this takes a 
lot of grant entries. Try reducing to a single page per queue (IOW set 
blkback's 'max_ring_page_order' to 0) and see if that helps. An alternative 
would be boot Xen with a larger grant table size... E.g. I boot mine with 
'gnttab_max_frames=128' (the default being 32).
  The fact that you can get the network interface up and running after boot is 
probably merely because there is less going on storage-wise and you're getting 
lucky.

  Cheers,

    Paul
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