Re: [Xen-users] Best dom0 for GPU pass through?

[Casey DeLorme <cdelorme@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David,

It sounds like you will want to go with the packaged Xen, it is available for both Debian and Ubuntu, you may find Ubuntu's process a bit easier.  The GUI experience would be libvirt and the xm toolstack that comes with the packaged Xen.  The xm and xl toolstacks are quite similar to xe, so if you are not scared of terminal then it can't hurt to investigate or give them a try.

I chose Debian for its size, smaller than Ubuntu and I had no need of a GUI or multimedia services on the server control system.  Also, I compiled my own kernel, so stock kernel has very little to do with it.  VGA Passthrough is still quite new, so thoughts on stability don't exactly apply (the usual reason one might pick Debian).  I had a lot of trouble the pciback module myself and found compiling the kernel to be an easy solution.

The xm toolstack has been deprecated for the xl toolstack, which has a very similar command set and is currently maintained.  Having read that much I walked the tougher path of compiling Xen 4.2 unstable with my kernel and using the xl toolstack have had great success with VGA Passthrough to Windows 7.  As far as I know, there is no port of libvirt for the xl toolstack yet, so you would be working with command line options, thankfully I only use maybe 3 commands regularly, to start and stop my virtual machine.  The configuration is a text file, easy enough to construct if you find the "Xen Man Pages".  I believe the xe toolstack exists as part of the XCP package, I have never used it though.

If you want to compile the latest kernel, I suggest this guide:

http://vanilja.org/kernel/

His instructions are short and simple, but don't point out everything you may want specific to Xen.

If you are not in a rush I am putting together a comprehensive tutorial that hopefully will be completed within the next month.

Hope that helps, and best of luck with whichever you choose.

~Casey

PS - Hardware selection can be rough, I recommend thorough research if you haven't already purchased.  As for performance, I use a Core i7 2600 and it powers the debian wheezy host, a pfSense route, Debian Squeeze nginx web server and Windows 7 multimedia PC (4 vcores and 6GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6870).  The media center scores 7.8 for graphics and performance is better than I anticipated.

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:39 PM, David Erickson <halcyon1981@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all-
I've been working with XenServer for years but have decided to build a
home server running the latest version of Xen to do GPU pass through
to a Win 7 x64 Media Center.  What is the best dom0 OS to install to
enable this?  I've seen lots of people using Debian Squeeze, but I
wonder why that is being chosen rather than say Ubuntu 12.04 which has
a much newer stock kernel?  Does anyone have a pointer for a great
guide to get the latest kernel and Xen versions running? (Presumably I
am going to need to compile them from scratch)

I've also been spoiled with XenCenter for management (although I've
used 'xe' a lot), is there anything available of similar quality for
just Xen base?

Thanks!
David

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