RE: [Xen-devel] nVidia Geforce 8400 GS PCI Express x16 VGA PassThroughto Windows XP Home 32-bit HVM Virtual Machine with Intel Desktop BoardDQ45CB

[<djmagee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As I've pointed out on this list before, there are not enough PCIe lanes on the 
DQ45CB to drive both the internal graphics adapter and the add-on adapter at 
the same time.  I believe the onboard one may be able to operate in some sort 
of VGA only mode when there is a card installed and used as the primary adapter.

I have a similar setup, using the same motherboard, and an ATI 4770.  I used 
the VGA passthrough patches from an earlier posting (I saw you followed the 
same set of instructions), with limited success.  I've been using 3.4-testing, 
and 'xenified' 2.6.29.6 kernel.  I made modifications to the dom0 portion of 
the patches so they would apply to my xenified 2.6.29 kernel.  These patches 
include code that will copy the VGA bios to the guest bios instead of using the 
emulated vga bios.  I've had very little success, however.  I have only tried 
passing through the ATI adapter.  In all instances, the guest bios messages 
appear on my monitor, so this much works.  In some cases, the guest essentially 
stops there; xm list show's about 2sec CPU usage and nothing ever happens after 
that point.  In other cases, the guest (win xp/vista/7, as well as KNOPPIX 
5.3.1 DVD) will boot all the way, but in very low res/color mode, and cannot 
properly initialize the video device.  Once or twice, it actually did recognize 
the device and had a reasonable default color/resolution combination.  In all 
cases where the guest actually boots, the system eventually freezes.  In some 
cases, I get endless streams of iommu page faults.

I have 8GB ram installed.  In all cases I've limited dom0 memory to 2GB.  In 
all cases, my guest has been assigned 2GB of memory.

I have a dual core e6600.  I've tried allowing dom0 to use both cores, 
offlining one core (using xend dom0_vcpu setting) after boot, and restricting 
dom0 to only one core using the dom0_max_vcpus xen hypervisor parameter.  In 
all of these cases I've tried both one and two vcpus for the guest.  My success 
with VGA passthrough seems somewhat random and no combination of cpu assignment 
seems to have any effect.

I have not tried with the 2.6.18-xen kernel as I haven't gotten it to boot on 
my hardware; it can never find my volume group, even if I create a initrd with 
all of the required modules, or build those drivers into the kernel.  I have 
not spent more than maybe a half an hour on this problem; I suspect it may have 
something to do with the version of mkinitrd I'm using (from Fedora 9 x64).

If anyone else has any insight or similar experience I'd also love to hear it.

Doug Magee
djmagee@xxxxxxxxxxxx
 
-----Original Message-----
From: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mr. Teo En Ming 
(Zhang Enming)
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 11:57 AM
To: enming.teo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] nVidia Geforce 8400 GS PCI Express x16 VGA 
PassThroughto Windows XP Home 32-bit HVM Virtual Machine with Intel Desktop 
BoardDQ45CB

I have uninstalled Xen 3.4.1 and installed Xen 3.5-unstable as suggested 
by Weidong.

-- 
Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) Dip(Mechatronics Engineering) 
BEng(Hons)(Mechanical Engineering)
Technical Support Engineer
Information Technology Department
Asiasoft Online Pte Ltd
Tampines Central 1 #04-01 Tampines Plaza
Singapore 529541
Republic of Singapore
Mobile: +65-9648-9798
MSN: teoenming@xxxxxxxxxxx
Alma Maters: Singapore Polytechnic, National University of Singapore



On 08/25/2009 11:47 PM, Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I have managed to do PCI-e VGA passthrough with the open source Xen 
> but the work is still in progress because although Windows XP guest 
> can see the REAL PCI-e x16 graphics card instead of an emulated 
> graphics driver, it cannot be initialized yet.
>
> Thanks to Intel Engineer Han Weidong, Pasi Kärkkäinen, Boris 
> Derzhavets, Marc, Caz Yokoyama, and others who have helped me and 
> shared their knowledge with me along the way.
>
> System Configuration:
>
> Intel Desktop Board DQ45CB with BIOS upgraded to 0093
> Onboard Intel GMA 4500 Graphics (IGD)
> nVidia Geforce 8400 GS PCI Express x16 Graphics Card
>
> Fedora 11 Linux 64-bit Xen paravirt operations Domain 0 Host Operating 
> System
> Xen 3.5 Unstable/Development Type 1 Hypervisor
> Jeremy Fitzhardinge's Xen paravirt-ops domain 0 Kernel 2.6.31-rc6
> Primary Video Adapter in BIOS: IGD
>
> Please see the screenshots and my blog at the link here:
>
> http://teo-en-ming-aka-zhang-enming.blogspot.com/2009/08/nvidia-geforce-8400-gs-pci-express-x16.html
>  
>
>




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