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{Guide} Create a Gaming Virtual Machine - Page 47

post #461 of 618
1/15/13 at 1:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chetyre View Post

I'm running a headless system. I can try changing the runtime to single user, but I don't think that will do anything.

The soonest I can guarantee I can play with my pc again will be on Thursday, so until then I'd appreciate any ideas of things to try.



EDIT: I went to my motherboard's (Asrock Z77 Extreme4) page and there is a bios update that mentions something about VT-D, but it sounds very engrish to me.
I am running bios version 2.50. Maybe that update broke VT-D support somehow? I'll try finding more about it.

According to http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Extreme4/?cat=Download&os=BIOS, VT-d is unsupported with BIOS 2.70, if I understand that correctly. Anyway, best to contact Asrock and find out. Also, I would be most interested in knowing why they broke VT-d, as well as when they are going to fix it.

EDIT: There are lots of references in Xen related websites and wikis that testify that this board supports VT-d. If Asrock has dropped that support, this information needs to be updated and users should be warned NOT to buy that board.

EDIT 2: The same goes for the Z77 Extreme6 board - same BIOS upgrade note.
Edited by powerhouse - 1/15/13 at 2:13am
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post #462 of 618
1/15/13 at 2:40am
This is worrisome. I have contacted Asrock and asked for clarifications on the matter. I'll keep you updated.
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post #463 of 618
1/15/13 at 7:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chetyre View Post

This is worrisome. I have contacted Asrock and asked for clarifications on the matter. I'll keep you updated.

Since you are running BIOS version 2.50 you should not be affected, as long as you don't upgrade. Still, it is worrisome and getting some explanations from the vendor would help. The note of the BIOS release 2.70 is also a bit vague. I could as well read it this way:

1. If VT-d was enabled prior to the BIOS upgrade, it will be enabled after the upgrade (but cannot be disabled).
2. If VT-d was disabled prior to the upgrade, you cannot enable it after the BIOS upgrade.

Let's put this way: I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig to test it.
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post #464 of 618
1/15/13 at 12:03pm
Thread Starter 
I think the VT-d wording in their statements only means that the user will not have the ability to turn it on or off. I think that means it is automatically on if the CPU supports it and off if not.
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post #465 of 618
1/16/13 at 2:46am
Success!

Does anyone know how to get the DomU to send sound to Dom0? Or is this a job for a PCI sound card?

I played about with a GTX 670 for ages, could not get it to work. Gave up and bought an ATI card.

I would like to report that I got an MSI TwinFrozr 3GDS R7950 working out of the box.

Here are my system specs.
  • Graphics Card: MSI TwinFrozr 3GDS R7950
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte B75-D3V
  • Fedora 16 64-bit
  • Kernel 3.6.11
  • Xen 4.4.1
  • DomU: Windows 7 64-bit with Latest Catalyst Driver 12-10

In the BIOS, I have set my integrated graphics from AUTO to ENABLED. I also changed the default adapter from AUTO to IGFX.

So, I'm using the integrated graphics for the linux host on one screen and I have windows 7 running on my right screen.

I'm using Synergy to transfer the mouse to and from windows. It works well with minimal input lag while gaming. Note that I had to enable the relative mouse movement in synergy to get minecraft input working. This is the only game I have tested so far.
Synergy does NOT work with UAC (User Account Control) so I disabled that. There is a work around, where you can use the VNC session to control the mouse during a UAC dialog. The video on my VNC does not work after the graphics driver is loaded (It just shows Windows is starting) This isn't a problem, but the mouse input still works to click on the UAC dialog smile.gif

These commands are run on startup to unbind the graphics card for xen
Code:
#VGA
echo "1002 679a" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/new_id
echo 0000:01:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/driver/unbind
echo 0000:01:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/bind

#VGA Audio
echo "1002 aaa0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/new_id
echo 0000:01:00.1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.1/driver/unbind
echo 0000:01:00.1 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/bind
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post #466 of 618
1/16/13 at 8:09am
@BulliteShot: I suppose you don't have a HDMI connection to your second screen (for Windows), and built-in speakers or headphone plugs.

I tried pulseaudio, but gave up when I couldn't get the ancient Windows drivers to forward sound. After spending several hours on it in vain, I went to the next computer shop and bought a $5 USB sound stick, plugged it into a passed-thru USB port, and wired the headphone output to the line in of the motherboard. This worked out of the box. Of course, you could get a PCI sound card and pass it thru to Windows, again with a wire from the sound card to the on-board line-in port.

Thanks for your input on synergy - I had about the same experience. Supposedly the "elevate" option should solve the admin login, but I couldn't make it work. In the end I settled for a USB KVM switch, which works great in all situations, with the disadvantage that I don't have copy-paste between Windows and Linux. If I need that, I run the remote desktop from within Windows to my Linux dom0.

Could you share your win7.cfg file?

Last question: How did you configure networking? This is my last real obstacle - my Windows 7 domU doesn't play Youtube without getting stuck every few seconds, nor does it play video files residing on my networked media tank (using VLC). Any observations on that?
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post #467 of 618
1/16/13 at 1:54pm
well I tried with a windows XP HVM, same thing. Thing doesn't start with a code 10... Guess I'll just bite the bullet and buy an ATI card. I really wish I could keep using nvidia, but all my project are ruined if I can't get this to work.
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post #468 of 618
1/16/13 at 1:59pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chetyre View Post

well I tried with a windows XP HVM, same thing. Thing doesn't start with a code 10... Guess I'll just bite the bullet and buy an ATI card. I really wish I could keep using nvidia, but all my project are ruined if I can't get this to work.

Ruined how? I am not sure what you are trying to do, but have you tried patching Xen and compiling from source? Don't give up yet smile.gif
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post #469 of 618
1/16/13 at 5:36pm
Hi, i managed to create a gaming vm using xen-4.1.4 and uefi duet booting directly off my sata controller (native ahci boot) with windows 7 X64 in uefi mode, my setup is:

  • AMD-FX 8120
  • CROSSHAIR V FORMULA 1703 bios
  • 12gb ram
  • RADEON 5450 primary
  • RADEON 6950 secondary
  • OS: archlinux

Basically what im doing is passing 1 of my sata controllers to the vm (the MB has 2), booting xen with a DUET disk image, duet provides drivers for usb2, usb3 and ahci, so it detects my sata and usb controllers, keyboard, mouse, pendrives etc, after that it boots windows 7 in uefi mode from one disk connected to the controller. The Windows installer did not work from duet so i had to install it natively from a pendrive (i believe you can convert a mbr setup to uefi if your mobo doesnt suport it), after that i launched the vm and continued with the windows installation.

i also patched xen to enable gfx_passthru option in xen, that means you can see the windows loading logo and desktop even if you dont have the drivers installed.

These are the patches i used.
http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=7967f17f8c538b860246275360953424
http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=07f4558e2b1f868dfc5824154058a8cc

The first patch is for loading your vga bios rom if your card is secondary, otherwise you'll only need the second patch

You must copy your vga bios to tools/firmware/vgabios/vgabios-pt.bin when building xen ( only needed using the first patch )

A precompiled duet image i created can be found here: http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=3d9ec1033c6658c0c77a8a7fafbeafc9
If your interested in building it yourself the source code can be found here: https://edk2.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/edk2/trunk/edk2/ you might need to tweak a few things tho.

More info on duet: http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/
Convert WIN7X64 MBR to UEFI: http://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds/pages/Windows_x64_BIOS_to_UEFI
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post #470 of 618
1/16/13 at 11:06pm
@ nbhusain: Interesting approach. I have some questions.

1. Was there a reason for choosing UEFI DUET boot? Faster Windows boot?

2. Does UEFI DUET boot only work when directly booting from disk (AHCI)?

3. How about disk performance of the passed-thru disk(s) (AHCI)? Is it faster than the regular LVM based disk access, using the GPLPV drivers? N.B.: As far as I have seen, the GPLPV drivers (under Windows 7) greatly affect disk I/O speed.

4. You say you boot Xen and afterwards Windows? Though I know that dom0 is nothing but a privileged VM, don't you need to run the dom0 (Linux) to start a domU (Windows)? I'm a bit confused.

5. Do you care to share the Windows cfg file?

Forgive me for asking so many questions, but it's the first time I read about this option. And thanks for sharing this info.
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