RE: [Xen-users] Re: VT-D RMRR is incorrect

["Dustin Henning" <Dustin.Henning@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christian,
        I am not sure what lead me to believe you had an AMD system.  To
summarize what I was trying to say, ASUS is claiming that this issue is
unsupported because you use Linux, but at the end of the day, the issue has
nothing to do with Linux directly (any virtualization software that used
VT-D could have the same problem, including those run on Windows.
Therefore, if you tell ASUS that you are running Windows and then tell them
that your issue is that their BIOS doesn't meet Intel's specifications, then
you might be able to get the case escalated (not that anyone at ASUS could
ever get it fixed), and if it were resolved, this would be good for the Xen
community.  Barring that, especially if you are in a hurry to get this
working, going with an Intel board should be a safe bet.  I mentioned my
thoughts on some other motherboard manufacturers as well, and I must redact
one of those, based on a thread I read this morning, Gigabyte motherboards
don't even support VT-D (or at least Gigabyte had no intention of supporting
it not too long ago), see this thread:
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2009-02/msg00630.html.
Good luck,
        Dustin

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christian
Tramnitz
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 10:31
To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Xen-users] Re: VT-D RMRR is incorrect

Dustin,

I couldn't really get what you were trying to say (I never mentioned 
AMD...) but anyway this isn't really Linux specific it's a BIOS bug. 
Unfortunately the only way to get in contact with that bug is to either 
use Xen or enable DMRR in the vanilla Linux kernel. If this cannot be 
fixed in software I'll probably return the board to the store and get an 
Intel DX58SO instead...


Yoshiharu, have you tested Xen-unstable yet? When commenting out the 
EFAULT you mentioned I get an immediate panic related to the rmrr 
address conflict on the latest 3.4-unstable tree.


@Xen devs: Is this something that could be worked around in Xen or do we 
really have to rely on exact RMRR values for vtd to work?
See http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.xen.user/43937 for 
more details.


Thanks,
    Christian

Dustin Henning schrieb:
>       I would recommend opening a new ticket with ASUS and telling them
> you were running Windows if you can get the same output Yoshiharu-san did
> and it fails to meet AMD specifications the way his fails to meet Intel
> specifications, after all, that would mean their board was out of spec
with
> AMD, not Linux.  However, in my experience, ASUS can't fix anything (I
tried
> to be an early adopter of the SiI port multiplier via their P5WD2-Premium
> onboard SiI SATA and a port multiplier from someone else, after all, their
> documentation clearly stated that they supported port multipliers, and
they
> didn't make their own, however, it wouldn't work with port multipliers,
they
> "escalated it to their engineering," and I never heard back, so the issue
> was never resolved).  I'd recommend going with Gigabyte or SuperMicro,
> because I've had equally bad support from MSI (I have several computers
> whose systems monitoring software goes off continuously until reboot after
> using a floppy drive, that would have to be a firmware issue, and they
can't
> fix it).  All the other manufacturers are either awfully new to the market
> or awfully unreliable (Biostar, for instance, isn't likely to have a board
> last much longer than their warranty in my experience, regardless of
> platform), SuperMicro would probably be the better bet compatibility wise,
> but they have a short warranty and less features (read: less additional
> features that probably don't work with Linux anyway).  Good luck finding
> something that works, be sure to let everyone know what it is.
>       Dustin


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