Re: [Xen-users] VGA Passthru - FLR?

[Gizmo Chicken <gizmochicken@xxxxxxxxx>]

Guilherme,

Okay.  Good to know you are certain that IOMMU is activated.

Like I wrote before, GPU passthrough is pretty easy to set up in XCP 1.6 when used in conjunction with XenCenter.  And by "pretty easy to set up in XCP 1.6 when used in conjunction with XenCenter," I mean select your GPU from a drop-down menu kind of easy.  So you might want to back up your current system (or swap out your hard drive) and install XCP 1.6, in conjunction with XenCenter, as a test.  If GPU passthrough doesn't work for you in XCP 1.6 (which relies on Xen 4.1), then you probably have some other hardware problems that you need to straighten out.

One note:  My system has UEFI, but I have found that things work much better when I force to boot into "comparability mode" at all times.  So if you have UEFI, you might want to try that, regardless what dom0 you select.

Best of luck!

GizmoChicken

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Guilherme Suzuki <suzuki.gui@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Gizmo, I've gone a little bit further than that. I managed to make things (vga passthru) working, but that only works with freshly booted dom0.

On Mar 7, 2013 6:57 AM, "Gizmo Chicken" <gizmochicken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Guilherme,

Before moving further, let's verify:  You do have IOMMU enabled in your BIOS, correct?  If not, you need to enable it to get GPU passthrough to work.

Now, back to XCP 1.6...

XCP 1.6 is kind of a "black box" approach, in that you won't be able to simply install it over your current dom0, but instead you must replace your current dom0.   That said, XCP 1.6 is based on CentOS 5.7 (Linux kernel v2.6.32.43).  But be aware that  XCP 1.6 won't give you a graphical desktop on dom0.  So if you need a graphical desktop on dom0, XCP 1.6 won't be a long term solution for you.  But given the ease of setting up GPU passthrough with XCP, it could be relatively easy way for you to verify that your system is capable of passthrough. 

Also, be aware that, although GPU passthrough is pretty simple with XPC 1.6, strangely, you'll have to do some digging on how to set up PCI-passthrough so that your mouse/keyboard/device is accessible from a guest VM.  It can be done, but the procedure isn't well-documented.  When (and if) you get XPC 1.6 installed and GPU passthrough working, write back to me, and I'll try to help with the PCI passthrough.  (One thing at a time.)

If you must have graphical desktop on dom0, then you have another option, namely installing the XCP-XAPI toolstack (which is the toolstack used by XCP 1.6) on a desktop version of Ubuntu.  In my case, I have successfully installed the XCP-XAPI toolstack on Ubuntu 12.10 desktop.

If you want to try XCP-XAPI toolstack on Ubuntu (I recommend Ubuntu 12.10 desktop if you do), here are two reasonably complete tutorials:

http://www.chimos.de/stuff/xen-xcp-ubuntu-manual/xen-xcp-ubuntu-manual.txt
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2012/06/28/installing-xcp-xapi-on-ubuntu-server-12-04-lts/

Be aware that installing the XCP-XAPI toolstack on Ubuntu requires lots of hacks and may be a bumpy process.  So before you even try, I recommend that you first experiment with XCP 1.6 (the "black box" approach) to see if it works with your hardware and if XenCenter fits your needs.

Hope the above help.

GizmoChicken

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Guilherme Suzuki <suzuki.gui@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>

> Can you tell ...

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