Hardware Virtualisation with XEN

[Student]

Hey guys,

 

i always hated windows, for its update policy, crashing and slowness, but i depend on it because i like gaming like most of you.

With linus mac review i came a cross Mac and Parallels, tested it and was not able to get any game running,... probably because of the leak of VT-d (virtual directed io)

 

Then i googled: "linux virtualisierung" and came across, that Xen is backed by: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, HP, Novell and SUN and they want it to be the industrial standard. http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Virtualisierung (German)
It promises almost native performance and full 3d support.

So i googled allot more and found out to have Hardware visualization, i need IOMMU for me VT-d i have more knowledge about intel than AMD.

VT-d is supported by most processors except the -K ones, i have a i7-3770k. So i asked a friend that always has spare pc parts, and bought a i5-3540. It took a few days, to get it to me so i stared setting up a few things.

I installed latest debian, and followed this guide. And it worked perfectly and was quite exited to get started with PCI Passthrough.

I read here that my chances are not the best to get my nvidia 660ti working, but i gave it a try.

The i5-3540 arrived and i stared, and ... i had the wrong Kernel, so PCI passthrough did not work, but i found another guide. I followed that guide, except i used a newer Linux kernel and a Xen 4.2 Stable, compiling worked fine and PCI passthrough worked. Windows detected the 660ti and i was able to install nivida drivers, but i got the code 43, an error accoured, card shutdown... Again i investigated, and here is what i came up with:

1. i could hac my 660ti and make it into a Quadro, but that could break it and i realy didn't want to do that.

2. i found will i was investigating towards KVM "The Nvidia driver, starting with 337.88 identifies the hypervisor and disables the driver when KVM is found." here

3. Nvidia Grid runs on: Citix XenServer here (they probably don't want consumer hardware in the Xen environment)

 

So conclusion:

I will try to get hands on a AMD Card and try that, that should work as far as i know. I will also try KVM and see what if i can get it working.

And probably take a look at paralles again, but it is expensive and i'd like to have a free solution.

 

Right now i will not work on that project because i have exams in one week and have to study about quantum physics, theoretical physics, and software engineering. I will continue in about 3 Weeks from now.

A 3d printer Project will be started at that time too, i don't get bored at vac.

 

Any tips, questions and comments are welcome!

 

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Update 15.02.2015

I am now using a GTX 470 soft moded to a Quadro 5000, and now i have one PC, two Operatingsystems, two mice and keybards, i can game on Windows, and use linux for all importent stuff!

[shujin]

this article was really hard to read due to color shifting also picture would've been great and even after reading everything I don't seems to grasp what you want to say or what you're talking about (but maybe it's just me being me after waking up). 

[Sauron]

Have you tried vmware player?

[Student]

Have you tried vmware player?

VMware player only supports parravirtualisation, and is therefor much slower.

I am looking for hardware virtualisation.

But i made some steps, i got a GTX 470 and flashed the bios to a Quadro 5000 and it should be supported now. I tried KVM but somehow i was getting Error code 12 or 10 depending on what way i choose to passthrough my 660ti. I did not test the "Quadro" because i like xen alot more.