RE: Windows PV 8.2.2 upgrading to 9.0.0

[Dominic Russell <dominic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I know it's been awhile with those issues, some of them I was using a work 
around and let it be.

For the Windows 7 network card not connecting on boot, another strange issue 
with it is that it was BSOD almost every evening at around 10:30 pm.  I noticed 
today that one of the virtual computers on that host was still using the GPLPV 
drivers, so thinking that maybe they could conflict, I cleaned it manually (the 
uninstall was not working) and installed drivers version 9.0.0 and, tonight, 
the Windows 7 did not crash!  I will see in the following evenings, sometimes 
it holds for a day or two before crashing again.  I would be curious to find 
out why at that specific hour, but still did not find anything special running 
on the server at that time.

Today I wanted to update all Windows 10 and 2016 Xen PV drivers to the latest 
9.0.0 and encountered two issues :
        1. The VNC keyboard not being responsive is still happening!  The Xen 
version is 4.8.5, which is dated 2019/12 and the drivers are 2019/6, so it 
should work together I think.

        2. The other issue is more critical, even if dpinst mentions that it 
updated the driver, for many of them, it did not, I did not notice at first, 
restarted the computer and... just a turning wheel at startup and it stays 
there forever.  Is there an easy fix for that or the only way is to clear 
registry with the help of Hiren's boot CD?
What is the correct procedure to update Windows Xen PV drivers?

Best regards,
Dominic Russell
MSI Bureautique Inc.


-----Message d'origine-----
De : Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Envoyé : 24 septembre 2018 04:51
À : Dominic Russell <dominic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; win-pv-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Objet : RE: Windows PV 8.2.2 and development build

> -----Original Message-----
> From: win-pv-devel [mailto:win-pv-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> On Behalf Of Dominic Russell
> Sent: 21 September 2018 20:39
> To: win-pv-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [win-pv-devel] Windows PV 8.2.2 and development build
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I've tried the Windows PV 8.2.2 on few virtual computers and the 
> latest development build on a virtual Windows 10 1803.
> 
> For 8.2.2, on one Windows 7, the network card does not start on a 
> reboot, but if I simply deactivate and reactive it (by connecting 
> through VNC), it initiates properly and starts working again.  Any way to fix 
> this?

Hi Dominic,

  Could you provide the QEMU log for your VM? The PV drivers emit log messages 
via an I/O port that is emulated by QEMU. These messages will probably shed 
light on the failure you're seeing.
  Without any such info. my guess would be that your VM is being starved of 
grant references by the storage stack (which starts earlier than the network 
stack). After boot, when the storage stack becomes less chatty, it frees some 
references up and hence the network driver has enough to start up. You may 
still see problems after this though. Try increasing the number of grant frames 
from the default 32... I typically run with 128.

> 
> On the latest development build, there is one peripheral with no 
> drivers, I've installed all drivers found on the FTP site.

Which URL? It appears that 
https://xenproject.org/downloads/windows-pv-drivers/development-builds.html is 
indeed out-of-date as it only lists the original 5 drivers. If you go directly 
to http://xenbits.xen.org/pvdrivers/win though, you should see all 8.

> Also the keyboard is not responsive in VNC with those drivers.

You may need a newer version of QEMU. Support for PV HID in Windows is reliant 
on some fairly recent fixes. Which version of QEMU are you using?

> I installed 8.2.2 on that
> virtual Windows 10, it works well except when I start BitTorrent, it 
> makes Windows crash after few minutes.  If I remove the network card 
> driver, and configure the virtual computer to use ioemu, BitTorrent works 
> flawlessly.
> Any way to fix this also?
> 

Could you give me detail of the exact test you ran and what the BSOD code was? 
Again, it could be a problem of grant reference starvation so please increase 
the number of grant frames and test again first.

  Cheers,

    Paul