RE: [Xen-users] Xen on AMD64 with Desktop on domU

["Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
> Samir Mishra
> Sent: 20 April 2006 12:00
> To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Xen-users] Xen on AMD64 with Desktop on domU
> 
> Hello.
> 
> I'm doing a fresh install of Xen on an AMD64 using Gentoo. I 
> have an nvidia graphics card. Dom0 will be a minimal system 
> install without Xorg or any other GUI applications. I'm 
> hoping to set up Xen with 3 guest domains -- one running 
> servers for the network (ntp, dhcp, bind, yp, etc.), one 
> guest domain running my desktop with Xorg and the third guest 
> domain to be used for development & testing.
> 
> What I'm hoping to find out is --
> 1. does the above make sense?
In theory yes. In practice, it doesn't work. See below. 

> 2. I want to access the X-server on the desktop domU directly 
> on tty7. 
> Is this possible? If so, how can I do this?
No. The X-server needs to be the OWNER of all the graphics card, and
your Dom0 takes ownership of the graphics card very early on. 

There is two solutions that come to mind:
You could perhaps use a simple PCI graphics card for the Dom0 console,
and then give the DomU the nvidia card, but any shared hardware must be
managed by one Domain only (and everyone else talking through that
domain to get access). Of coruse, this assumes that there is an nVidia
driver that works under Xen, which I don't think exists (yet) - and I
very much doubt that native kernel graphics drivers will work "out of
the box" - as they probably do all sorts of "nasty" things that Xen
needs to be aware of.

Or you can use vncserver/vncviewer to access your desktop machine.

> 3. what are the things I need to watch out for?

See above. 

[Snip other questions that I can't really answer anyways]

--
Mats


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