[Xen-devel] xci pci passthru video card flr etc

[Andrew Lyon <andrew.lyon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I want to try using pci passthru to give a windows 7 hvm access to a
dedicated video card, I've read all of the threads I can find about
video passthru but I still have some questions:

I use rebased opensuse Xen patches to make the dom0 kernel, currently
running 2.6.29 as there are networking problems with gplpv and 2.6.30,
I believe it is necessary to use Function Level Reset to reset the
graphics card before the hvm domU boots, otherwise it will be
incorrectly initialized by the bios or dom0 ? and therefore will not
function correctly, I plan to rebase the following patches to
2.6.29/30 to enable FLR:

http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb?p=xenclient/linux-2.6.27-pq.git;a=commit;h=50c08c0d3e499c5576e906ab5f0c9c234fba2493
http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb?p=xenclient/linux-2.6.27-pq.git;a=commit;h=b631b9005cd72b0e2e859dd1fab557a3015c8b58
http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb?p=xenclient/linux-2.6.27-pq.git;a=commit;h=36083d0755a740ed509ca9812db9576473bc4e8b

Are all 3 patches required? are any other patches required? what about
patches to Xen?

The http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb?p=xenclient/linux-2.6.27-pq.git
patchqueue includes pull's from other trees, is there anything in them
that I need for FLR or other necessary new features?

I am currently running Xen 3.4 but plan to upgrade to the latest
3.4.1-rc before I try video passthru, I've already patched 3.4 to fix
the problem with viridian and windows 7, I assume that fix will be
included in 3.4.1 as it is in testing
(http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-changelog/2009-06/msg00119.html)

My system currently has a 512mb 8600GT which I use with the nvidia
binary drivers driving a pair of 1920x1200 tft's, I think I can get
access to another identical 8600GT so I plan to drive one monitor with
each card, has anybody had success with passthru using nvidia cards?

For keyboard and mouse I'm going to either use Synergy
(http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/) or make a patched version of vnc
server which does not output video and run that in windows 7, I plan
to connect the second DVI output from dom0 to a kvm device so that the
second display remains enabled in X, I should then be able to run the
vnc viewer full screen on the right hand X display even through the
signal will be coming from the second video card.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated, perhaps somebody
else is thinking about trying this and would be willing to work with
me to get it working?

Andy

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