[Xen-users] Xen with VGA Passthrough on desktop Ubuntu system

[Adam Honse <calcprogrammer1@xxxxxxxxx>]

I just found out that Xen supported hardware passthrough, so I've installed it on my Ubuntu 12.04 home server/media center as I wanted to play some games in Windows.  The CPU is AMD A8-3870K and it appears that hvm itself is working.  I was able to boot the Windows 7 install CD with a VNC console.  I now want to configure the VGA passthrough.  Upon adding the hardware passthrough lines, I received an error along the lines of "PCI device xx:xx.x is not assignable".  I modprobe'd the xen-pciback module but it did not resolve the issue.  I am thinking that is because the device is in use by the system (running the 'radeon' module and the open-source radeon drivers).

My question is this, is it possible to have the Dom-0 (native) system use the VGA device, and then relinquish control over the device upon starting the hardware-passthrough VM?  It seems like it would be possible, shutting down the X-server before starting the VM, but I was unable to remove the 'radeon' module in my tests.  It keeps saying the module is in use, though nothing depends on it and I disconnected all outputs.  If not, is it possible to have two guests, a Windows and an Ubuntu guest, that both access the hardware passthrough but not at the same time?  Also, how do you go about 'reserving' the PCI device in pcibackend so that it is available for the VM?

Thanks,
Adam Honse
_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-users