On 10/12/06, Ian Pratt <m+Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm about to put a 4-core Linux system together, and I would like to
> be able to use Xen to run a very limited dom0 and a few
> general-purpose domU's. It would be great if I could run the graphics
> driver directly in one of the domU's rather than using the slower
> emulated driver. I understand it would require modification of the
> driver source, and fortunately Intel has seen fit to provide it.
>
> Has anyone considered doing this yet? Does anyone have any advice on
> what mechanisms to use? Is there any general framework being created
> for this sort of thing or would it be quicker to make a specific hack?
> What would be the best way to solve the domU to physical lookup
> problem? I imagine it may be possible to put a special mark in the
> memory manager of dom0 that could guarantee physical regions are where
> domU expects.
Graphics drivers that work under dom0 actually have a pretty good chance
of also working in a suitably privileged domU, without source
modifications. Some work, some don't. Those that try to make BIOS calls
seem to be most problematic, though I guess even they could be fixed. I
think more success has been had using kernel drivers than driving the
card from X.
Give it a go, trying the various tricks that have been suggested on the
list beforehand, and then please report back. At some point it would be
nice to have concerted effort to make it work for a wider range of
graphics cards.
I can see BIOS calls might be a problem, because the emulated BIOS
might not do the right thing - I have no idea whether this specific
driver uses them or not. Im guessing the drivers that do work avoid
memory-mapped framebuffers and registers, and stick to onboard ram and
i/o ports?
Also, this chance of working only refers to source-code compatibility,
not binary kernel module compatibility, correct? Not a problem in this
case, of course, but it would affect NVidia drivers. I've been
assuming that I would have to use the Intel chipset to get a
moderately powerful 3d chip, but if I could put in say, a 7900GTX in
instead, that would be fantastic! I saw a page talking about
compatibility with NVidia drivers, but I thought the author meant he
was running the driver in dom0 and using software rendering in domU.
Im waiting on the Kentsfield CPU release, so I wont be trying any of
this for a month or so unfortunately. I'll definitely post my results.
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