Mailing List Archive

Xen-patch for the latest nvidia driver is in this thread->

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85037

I haven't tried it myself, yet, so I can't vouch for how well it works.

On 1/30/07, Jacob Gorm Hansen <jacobg@diku.dk> wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> being dissapointed a bit by ATI's support for Xen, I just purchased a
> top-of-the-line Dell box with an expensive NVidia graphics card, as
> rumour said they would work better than the ATI ones. Unfortunately, the
> NVidia installer detects that I am running Xen, and then refused to
> compile the kernel module, saying that Xen is not supported. Does anyone
> know of a way around this check, or have fresh experiences getting Xen
> and NVidia to play together?
>
> Thanks,
> Jacob
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com
> [mailto:xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of
> Jacob Gorm Hansen
> Sent: 30 January 2007 15:33
> To: xen-devel
> Subject: [Xen-devel] NVidia driver status
>
> hi,
>
> being dissapointed a bit by ATI's support for Xen, I just purchased a
> top-of-the-line Dell box with an expensive NVidia graphics card, as
> rumour said they would work better than the ATI ones.
> Unfortunately, the
> NVidia installer detects that I am running Xen, and then refused to
> compile the kernel module, saying that Xen is not supported.
> Does anyone
> know of a way around this check, or have fresh experiences getting Xen
> and NVidia to play together?

Now, there may be calls to say that I'm biased here, but I'm really not
working with the ATI-side of AMD anyways, so:

The reason it refuses to compile the kernel module is probably more to
do with the fact that the guys at nVidia KNOWS that it's not going to
work anyways. If that's the case, it's not really much point in
bypassing the check itself.

It's quite common for (graphics) driver code to make "nasty" stuff with
memory addresses, use DMA for all sorts of weird and wonderfull things,
and in general do things that aren't "xen-friendly". Most other drivers,
for example, won't put a memory address inside a DMA buffer, that refers
to a different area of memory that may not even be a DMA buffer in
itself.

Just as an idea for "tricking": have you run strace on the installer to
see how it figures out that you're on a Xen kernel? Is it using some
xm-tool, the kernel name (-xen) or some other method. You may be able to
bypass it once you know how it works... ;-)

--
Mats
>
> Thanks,
> Jacob
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>
>
>



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On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 04:43:48PM +0100, Petersson, Mats wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com
> > [mailto:xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of
> > Jacob Gorm Hansen
> > Sent: 30 January 2007 15:33
> > To: xen-devel
> > Subject: [Xen-devel] NVidia driver status
> >
> > hi,
> >
> > being dissapointed a bit by ATI's support for Xen, I just purchased a
> > top-of-the-line Dell box with an expensive NVidia graphics card, as
> > rumour said they would work better than the ATI ones.
> > Unfortunately, the
> > NVidia installer detects that I am running Xen, and then refused to
> > compile the kernel module, saying that Xen is not supported.
> > Does anyone
> > know of a way around this check, or have fresh experiences getting Xen
> > and NVidia to play together?
>
> Now, there may be calls to say that I'm biased here, but I'm really not
> working with the ATI-side of AMD anyways, so:
>
> The reason it refuses to compile the kernel module is probably more to
> do with the fact that the guys at nVidia KNOWS that it's not going to
> work anyways. If that's the case, it's not really much point in
> bypassing the check itself.

It works just fine on Xen kernels from what I can tell. There are 3rd
party YUM repos which provide pre-compiled nvidia modules which work
with the Fedora Xen kernels.

$ uname -r
2.6.19-1.2895.fc6xen
$ cat /proc/modules | grep nvidia
nvidia 7760984 32 - Live 0xffffffff8826b000 (P)

Now perhaps the RPM has been patched to make it compile on Xen, or perhaps
it is just a bug in the installer script, but it does look like it works.
In either case one should file support requests with NVidia directly since
it is a closed source driver which means open source developers can't do much
(if anything) to debug problems without risking getting tainted by/violating
the licensing terms.

Dan.
--
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|=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=|
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My two cents,
Mats, what you say about DMA nastiness is right, and known workarounds
exist. Athough not always reliable, probably the reason why Jacob tried
switching vendors.
It is usually the case that the driver bundles can be unpacked to some
temporary dir, i.e
sh <ati_installer.run> --keep
From there you can selectively install the user level bits, patch the
module to work with xen, and then build it.
If all fails, livna advertises a xen-compatible nvidia kernel module rpm
for fedora. Unpack it and steal the kmod.
Andres

>Message: 5
>Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:43:48 +0100
>From: "Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@amd.com>
>Subject: RE: [Xen-devel] NVidia driver status
>To: "Jacob Gorm Hansen" <jacobg@diku.dk>, "xen-devel"
> <Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
>Message-ID:
> <907625E08839C4409CE5768403633E0B018E190F@sefsexmb1.amd.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com
>>[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of
>>Jacob Gorm Hansen
>>Sent: 30 January 2007 15:33
>>To: xen-devel
>>Subject: [Xen-devel] NVidia driver status
>>
>>hi,
>>
>>being dissapointed a bit by ATI's support for Xen, I just purchased a
>>top-of-the-line Dell box with an expensive NVidia graphics card, as
>>rumour said they would work better than the ATI ones.
>>Unfortunately, the
>>NVidia installer detects that I am running Xen, and then refused to
>>compile the kernel module, saying that Xen is not supported.
>>Does anyone
>>know of a way around this check, or have fresh experiences getting Xen
>>and NVidia to play together?
>>
>>
>
>Now, there may be calls to say that I'm biased here, but I'm really not
>working with the ATI-side of AMD anyways, so:
>
>The reason it refuses to compile the kernel module is probably more to
>do with the fact that the guys at nVidia KNOWS that it's not going to
>work anyways. If that's the case, it's not really much point in
>bypassing the check itself.
>
>It's quite common for (graphics) driver code to make "nasty" stuff with
>memory addresses, use DMA for all sorts of weird and wonderfull things,
>and in general do things that aren't "xen-friendly". Most other drivers,
>for example, won't put a memory address inside a DMA buffer, that refers
>to a different area of memory that may not even be a DMA buffer in
>itself.
>
>Just as an idea for "tricking": have you run strace on the installer to
>see how it figures out that you're on a Xen kernel? Is it using some
>xm-tool, the kernel name (-xen) or some other method. You may be able to
>bypass it once you know how it works... ;-)
>
>--
>Mats
>
>
>>Thanks,
>>Jacob
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Xen-devel mailing list
>>Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
>>http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 6
>Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:46:47 +0000
>From: Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@cl.cam.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Clean up and fix errors in strncpy ->
> strlcpy conversion
>To: Christoph Egger <Christoph.Egger@amd.com>,
> <xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
>Cc: Aron Griffis <aron@hp.com>, xen-ia64-devel@lists.xensource.com
>Message-ID: <C1E518E7.8156%Keir.Fraser@cl.cam.ac.uk>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>
>
>
>On 30/1/07 3:26 pm, "Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@amd.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>>You're confusing the cleanups with the bugfixes. Any use of
>>>safe_strcpy() in my patch was just cleanup.
>>>
>>>The bugfixes are on the signature fields (the first change quoted
>>>above), which I changed to use memcpy since strlcpy adds an unwanted
>>>NUL.
>>>
>>>
>>Aron: If the above patch is still correct (against CS 13703), please resend it
>>for Keir to apply.
>>
>>
>
>The original patch still applies cleanly to xen-unstable so I'll apply it
>without a resend.
>
> -- Keir
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Xen-devel mailing list
>Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
>http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>
>
>End of Xen-devel Digest, Vol 23, Issue 227
>******************************************
>
>


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I've tried this or a similar patch with the latest nvidia binary drivers and
it works just fine fine.



IIRC the patch doesn't patch any of the scripts in the nvidia package but
just compiling the kernel module against the xenlinux kernel worked fine. i
installed the rest of the tools including the munging of xorg.conf under
native linux so no use the same setup for linux and xen.



this is for an older version of the nvidia card (7300 LE, IIRC) and the
latest driver.



rolf



From: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com
[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of Trolle Selander
Sent: 30 January 2007 15:44
To: xen-devel
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] NVidia driver status



Xen-patch for the latest nvidia driver is in this thread->

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85037

I haven't tried it myself, yet, so I can't vouch for how well it works.

On 1/30/07, Jacob Gorm Hansen <jacobg@diku.dk> wrote:

hi,

being dissapointed a bit by ATI's support for Xen, I just purchased a
top-of-the-line Dell box with an expensive NVidia graphics card, as
rumour said they would work better than the ATI ones. Unfortunately, the
NVidia installer detects that I am running Xen, and then refused to
compile the kernel module, saying that Xen is not supported. Does anyone
know of a way around this check, or have fresh experiences getting Xen
and NVidia to play together?

Thanks,
Jacob


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Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com <mailto:Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 16:43 +0100, Trolle Selander wrote:
> Xen-patch for the latest nvidia driver is in this thread->
>
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85037

Hi,

I tried with the patch, and now have X running with glxgears at insane
speeds :-) I am using Archlinux, so I used the ABS PKGBUILD script to
get the library files installed in the right places.

Thanks to all for the help,

Jacob


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On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> I tried with the patch, and now have X running with glxgears at insane
> speeds :-) I am using Archlinux, so I used the ABS PKGBUILD script to
> get the library files installed in the right places.

-very- cool! I was just thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if I could run Xen on my
new laptop with VT and a NVidia card"..

Now I just ned to wait for a Xen version that works with 2.6.20-rcX so I
can get fully working suspend/resume/wireless, too. :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
| depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981 |
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