Re: [Xen-users] Xen and nvidia

[Andrew Bobulsky <rulerof@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 12, 2013, at 11:17 PM, Howell Tam <pigeon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>    I've got a couple of questions regarding the current
> status of nvidia with Xen, since it is well known that nvidia
> doesn't work as smooth at the moment with Xen (comparing to ati).
>
>
>    My current goal is to use one nvidia gtx460 card and the
> onboard intel hd4000 on dom0, and then do passthrough for
> another nvidia gtx460 to a Windows domU.
>
>
>    I know there are patches from Jean David Techer for Xen and
> nvidia vga passthrough. Are those patches and steps (such as dumping the
> VGA rom) needed if I only want to use the nvidia card on Dom0?
>
>
>    I also understood that new(er) versions the proprietary nvidia
> drivers does not officially support non-quadro cards with Xen on
> both dom0 and domU. Are there any workaround for that?
>
>
>    Thanks!
>
>
> Regards,
> Howell.
>
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> Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

Hello Howell,

Your GTX card will/should behave as if it were installed on any normal
Linux system when used in your Dom0.  No patches or special work is
required to make hardware behave normally in Dom0 as a general rule...
As far as I can recall, anyway :P

The case where those patches comes into play is when using VGA
Passthrough; this is a type of passthrough that goes above and beyond
traditional PCI Passthrough.  You use IOMMU/VT-d to expose the video
card to your DomU, and in addition, the VGA BIOS of that card is also
loaded into the HVM BIOS's memory to allow the card to be controlled
by the DomU at boot time.  Simple PCI Passthrough of the device will
give you the same, but only after you've loaded a driver in the VM to
control the card, which is good enough for most purposes.  It's not
necessary to use VGA Passthrough for most cases, and though it's
extremely cool, results are a little iffy from what I've seen
recently.

Basically, if anyone has reported any type of success with your card,
I'd wager you're good to go :)

Cheers,
Andrew Bobulsky

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