[Xen-users] Xen linux-2.6.18 on Intel dx58so motherboard?

[adam_richter2004@xxxxxxxxx]

At the outset, I would like to thank Tim Moore for posting his evidently 
successful experiences with trying to get PCI passthrough working on Xen with 
an Intel dx58so motherboard in April at 
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-04/msg00399.html .

Based on Tim's information about the dx58so mostly working, I also switched my 
Intel Core i7 motherboard from an ASUS p6t to the Intel dx58so to get xen-3.4 
to enable support for the IO memory management unit ("VT-d"), which I 
understand is currently necessary for Xen to support PCI passthrough.

The discussion in the thread started by Tim's posting indicates that it was 
necessary to use the linux-2.6.18 version of the Linux domain 0 patches in 
order to have the pciback driver needed for domain 0 to give PCI devices to 
other virtual machines, and that appears to still be true today.

Unfortunately, when I try to boot the 2.6.18 kernel, it does not seem to see my 
SATA disks when they are connected to the motherboard, or to an PCI card using 
an InitIO chip or when I use an IDE disk connected by a PCI card using a 
Silicon Image chip.  In comparison, booting Jeremy Fitzhardinge's 
linux-2.6.30-rc6 kernel that he maintains in git works fine.

Tim mentioned in his posting "Support for this chipset in 2.6.18 is not very 
good", so I suspect that he may have had to add some PCI ID's or make some 
other changes the 2.6.18 kernel that comes with Xen.

So I would like to ask if anybody out there is running Xen 3.4/linux-2.6.18.8 
for domain 0 on an Intel dx58so motherboard and would be inclined to describe 
any modifications that they had to make to the 2.6.18.8 sources included in 
Xen-3.4 to make it boot and find their root filesystem (when I think it gets to 
the initial ramdisk, gives me a blank screen, and then prints "Failed to obtain 
physical IRQ 1" whenever I press a key on the USB keyboard). 

That said, I would not recommend that anyone make a huge effort to answer my 
question, as I think I will need to try to switch to the xci ("Xen Client 
Initiative") version of Xen anyhow.

Anyhow, thanks in advance to anyone who answers.  I would be happy to test 
things on this motherboard if that would be helpful.

Adam Richter





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