Re: [Xen-users] Hiding PCI devices with modprobe.d

[Daniel Shub <Daniel.Shub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have now tried a number of different solutions for hiding the PCI devices, 
but nothing is working completely. The simplest conceptually is David's 
suggestion to load the xen-pciback module in the initrd. This guarantees that 
the xen-pciback module gets loaded before any other modules have a chance to 
bind the devices. This works nearly flawlessly, except for an issue with my 
Intel integrated sound card that I am trying to hide. I am having the identical 
problem as was discussed at 
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-05/msg00283.html where I need 
to allow the dom0 to bind the sound card and load the kernel modules before 
hiding it, otherwise I get noise and choppy playback in the domU. This means 
Ian's suggestion of recompiling the kernel and and hiding the devices with grub 
will likely not be any better.

I then tried to hide the devices later since this would allow the dom0 to bind 
the sound card. This is was basically a modification of Gordan's suggestion 
where I unbind devices with a modprobe.d conf file since. My conf file is

  install xen-pciback /root/pcidetach.sh; insmod /lib/modules/$(/bin/uname 
-r)/kernel/drivers/xen/xen-pciback/xen-pciback.ko.gz

where I tried a number of different things in pcidetach.sh. The problem I kept 
running into is that I am running pcidetach.sh before loading the xen-pciback 
module which means I cannot hide anything. i should say that Gordan's actual 
suggestion probably would not run into this problem since he suggested 
providing the configuration to prevent other modules from binding the devices. 

I finally tried hiding the devices even later by creating a systemd udev service

  [Unit]
  Description=PCI hide

  [Service]
  Type=oneshot
  ExecStart=/bin/bash /root/pcihide.sh

  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target

where pcihide.sh uses the xl toolstack to hide the devices. This works, except 
it runs after the domUs in /etc/xen/auto get started. I could obviously add the 
start up of the domUs into pcihide.sh, but seems like a real hack.

My plan is to go back to hiding the devices in the initrd where I load 
explicitly load snd-intel-hda and then xen-pciback. I would need to create a 
modprobe.d conf file that can handle unbinding the sound card similar to 
Gordan's orginal suggestion. It is a little harder since I need to let it get 
bound and then unbound before loading xen-pciback. I am still open to any 
suggestions.

This of course would be a lot easier if the sound card issue 
(http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-05/msg00283.html) has been 
resolved. Have other people experienced the sound card problem and/or is it 
being worked on?

Thanks for all the help so far
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