Re: [Xen-users] Intel Pentium D VT capable 9xx - Presler 65nm - Now shipping and in hand!

[Art Arica3D <nikicart@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nick,

Introduction first...

We wanted everything to be ready the day the chip showed up... and had
the complete computer assembled and working with an inexpensive
Celeron CPU ($75) before the Presler Pentium D arrived.

We went with the Abit AW8-MAX motherboard as this was the first 955x
chipset motherboard we found that had BIOS support... they released it
early on December 19 well before you could even purchase the chips.

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/bios.php?categories=1&model=276


Newer motherboards
================
Now it is nearly 3 weeks since we ordered and put together this
plan... so doing it today I would track down a newer Intel 975x
chipset motherboard.  These are newer chipsets at the same basic
price. The Gigabyte GA-G1975X motherboard is readily available today
(Newegg.com or Mwave.com as confirmed source).

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-G1975X.htm

It looks like on December 26 Gigabtye released their BIOS with a
"Presler B1 micro code" update.

You might also be able to locate a Intel-produced motherboard such as
the D975XBX - but I haven't looked into that one yet.


Getting Xen-unstable working
=========================
We have the Pentium D 930... the 3.0ghz model.  We can rebuild a
Gentoo base Xen host in about 20 minutes... and we have had to build
it a lot... as it proved unstable right away.

So far, we have found that changeset 8522 works on our system, we are
able to kick off a install of Windows XP Profesional and it works! 
Newer Xen builds such as changeset 8525 seem to crash right away on us
even with non-VMX guests.  We are currently still trying to track down
the exact changeset that is causing us these major crash issues (8522
is already narrowed down from where we started).

we are using:
Linux kernel version 2.6.12.6-xen0
gcc version 3.4.4 (Gentoo 3.4.4-r1, ssp-3.4.4-1.0, pie-8.7.8)
64-bit with 4GB of memory.

Relevant part of dmsg that shows VMX enabled:

(XEN) Initializing CPU#0
(XEN) Detected 2992.685 MHz processor.
(XEN) CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 16K
(XEN) CPU: L2 cache: 2048K
(XEN) CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0
(XEN) CPU: Processor Core ID: 0
(XEN) VMXON is done
(XEN) CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz stepping 02
(XEN) Booting processor 1/1 eip 90000
(XEN) Initializing CPU#1
(XEN) CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 16K
(XEN) CPU: L2 cache: 2048K
(XEN) CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0
(XEN) CPU: Processor Core ID: 1
(XEN) VMXON is done
(XEN) CPU1: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz stepping 02


>From digging in the mailing list archives, the "VMXON" is what you want to see.

We still are testing and experimenting, but I think the results so far are good.

  Stephen Gutknecht




On 1/12/06, Nick Craig-Wood <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 10:39:21AM -0800, Art Arica3D wrote:
> > MWave.com, ZipZoomFly.com and OnSale.com both all taking orders ...
> > Onsale.com shiped my chip out January 6th (2nd day air) and we got it
> > today January 9!!
>
> Does it definitely support VT and how do you know (eg from BIOS or Xen
> boot message)?
>
> Which motherboard & BIOS did you use?
>
> Did you successfully run Xen/VT with it yet?
>
> I want to rush out and get one of these, but I don't want to spend all
> that $$$ only to find that VT is disabled in the BIOS or something
> like that!
>
> Thanks
>
> Nick

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