[mythtv-users] VMWare on the backend. Viable solution?

[Kenni Lund]

2010/1/25 Jon Whitear <jon at whitear.org>:
>
>>
>> Did you try with latest qemu-kvm v0.12.2 released 4 days ago? There's
>> a change in this version which should deny starting a guest with PCI
>> passthrough if no IOMMU is present...earlier versions would allow the
>> guest to start, but the passthrough would not work. I suppose this
>> should give you a definite answer if VT-d is enabled on your system.
>>
>>
>
> Just upgraded:-
>
> jon at server ~ $ qemu -version
> QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.2 (qemu-kvm-0.12.2), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
>
> jon at server ~ $ sudo ./start.media
> Password:
> device: 07:01.0: driver="pci-assign" host="07:01.0"
> device: 07:01.2: driver="pci-assign" host="07:01.2"
> No IOMMU found.  Unable to assign device "07:01.0"
> Failed to deassign device "07:01.0" : Invalid argument
> Error initializing device pci-assign
>
> Oh well, no VT-d after all.
>
> Thanks for all the tips along the way, Kenni, but it looks like I'll be saving up for a HD Homerun if I want to virtualise my back end.

That's a pity :-/

If someone is searching the mail archive looking for information about
VT-d support, I just found out that there's an easy way to detect if
VT-d is enabled on a system. Grepping on IOMMU and DMAR on dmesg, will
tell you if VT-d support is enabled. On my system with working VT-d I
get the following, while on another system with only VT-x support and
no VT-d support I get no output at all:

[root at mediaserver ~]# dmesg | egrep "DMAR|IOMMU"
ACPI: DMAR 00000000bdae9dc0 00108 (v01 IntelR AWRDACPI 322E3030 DRWA 00000002)
DMAR: Host address width 36
DMAR: DRHD base: 0x000000fed91000 flags: 0x0
IOMMU fed91000: ver 1:0 cap c0000020630272 ecap 1000
DMAR: DRHD base: 0x000000fed92000 flags: 0x0
IOMMU fed92000: ver 1:0 cap c0000020630272 ecap 1000
DMAR: DRHD base: 0x000000fed93000 flags: 0x1
IOMMU fed93000: ver 1:0 cap c9008020630272 ecap 1000
DMAR: RMRR base: 0x000000bdaf0000 end: 0x000000bdafffff
DMAR: RMRR base: 0x000000bdc00000 end: 0x000000bfffffff
DMAR: No ATSR found
IOMMU 0xfed92000: using Register based invalidation
IOMMU 0xfed91000: using Register based invalidation
IOMMU 0xfed93000: using Register based invalidation
IOMMU: Setting RMRR:
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:02.0 [0xbdc00000 - 0xc0000000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:02.1 [0xbdc00000 - 0xc0000000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1d.0 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1d.1 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1d.2 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1d.7 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1a.0 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1a.1 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1a.2 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1a.7 [0xbdaf0000 - 0xbdb00000]
IOMMU: Prepare 0-16MiB unity mapping for LPC
IOMMU: Setting identity map for device 0000:00:1f.0 [0x0 - 0x1000000]


Best Regards
Kenni Lund