[Xen-users] GPLPV on Windows 2008 64bit: it works! (was: Windows GPLPV Drivers - Development stopped?)

["Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx>]

You know what, I believe you SHOULD make a new release soon. Here's why.

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:01 AM, James Harper
<james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There was a bug that was causing
> total filesystem destruction under XP,

Which bug for XP? I'm using it for XP SP3 and Windows 2003 SP2 32bit,
it's usable so far, no corruption.

> and a few people have reported problems under 64 bit

I'm one of them :D
But turns out there's an easy-enough workaround for that. I found out
about it after reading
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindowsGplPv/Installing

"Warning: When installing for the first time, make sure you do NOT
boot with /GPLPV specified in your boot entry. This is sure to break
things!"

Although that warning was for a different case, I believe what happens
is the same thing, in that both qemu drive and xen vbd activates at
the same time. Here are the details:
- during installation of GPLPV 0.9.12-pre13, xenpci was NOT activated
immediately. Probably because it's not signed. This is the MAIN
difference from 32bit installation. The effect of that, xen vbd and
xen net was NOT installed at this time.
- during the next boot, xenpci activates automatically (after
selecting Disable Driver Signature Enforcement) because /GPLPV was no
longer needed
- at that time, xen vbd and xen vfb was installed, and activated
immediately. Problem is, Qemu disk is also still active.

The result? BAM! Double disk detection :D

"Simple" workaround :
- after installting the driver, DO NOT REBOOT YET
- run bcdedit to add /NOGPLV entry
- reboot WITH NOGPLPV. It should activate xenpci, which in turn
install xen net and xen vbd drivers (but NOT activate them yet, which
is good).
- reboot again using standard option (don't select NOGPLPV). It will
say "new disk installed" (or something like that). At this point you
MUST disable Large Send Offload on xen net.
- reboot again
- setup ip address for xen net
- enjoy :D

I got this from ipef : dom0->domU 191 Mbps, domU->dom0 486 Mbps (which
is around the same numbers as Windows 2003 32bit with GPLPV)

> so I'm not comfortable releasing binaries at this
> point.

Again, I think you should. Simply re-releasing 0.9.12-pre13, but with
SIGNED drivers, SHOULD (correct me if I'm wrong here) allow it to
install xenpci (and consecuently xen net and xen vbd) on the first
try, removing the chance for dual disk detection. The LSO is another
problem, but turning it off is still acceptible.

Tests were done on opensolaris dom0, with zvol-backed storage that
allows easy snapshot and rollbacks in case of problems (which in this
test, happens a lot :D )

Regards,

Fajar

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