KVM VGA Passthrough halfway working

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pepsifx357
Posts: 3
Joined: 2015/01/06 14:50:47

KVM VGA Passthrough halfway working

Post by pepsifx357 » 2015/01/06 15:31:36

HI, I'm sorta new to CentOS, so I'm still learning where everything is. I hope this post is where it belongs.

I'm trying to set up a KVM VGA passthrough to Windows 7, however I ran into a "code 43" error, so I decided to switch over to passing my nvidia card to Debian 8. I figure I could troubleshoot easier from that. Here is my hardware:

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R.2
AMD FX8350 8 core
ATi Radeon 6450 (Host card for CentOS)
Nvidia 560 Ti (Passthrough card for Windows or Debian)

I used multiple tutorials to set this up and after a few days, I had it half way working.

I blacklisted nouveau on CentOS and stubbed the device, did the whole vfio-bind script, which looked like it was working, however, I couldn't get the guest machine scripts to work with Virsh, so I used Virt-Manager 0.10.0 to pass the card to the guest, which seemed to work...halfway. With Windows 7, under "Manage Devices," it saw the card as NVIDIA GFX 560 Ti. I downloaded the driver and installed it fine, but the monitor connected to the card never turned on. I checked "Manage Devices" again and there was a exclamation mark on it with "code 43" could not start device. Looking at the the device by resources, both the graphics card and the HDMI audio, along with the vfio balloon driver were sharing IRQ 11.

I then tried it with Debian 8, with the stock nouveau driver. Upon booting, when the kernel loaded, the monitor attached to the card actually turned on long enough for gdm to start and then it turned back off before the Desktop login screen loaded up. Oddly enough, when I hit ctrl+alt+F1, to go to tty1, the monitor turns back on and I can use it, but no Desktop. I tried to install the nvidia-driver package, and it didn't like that. The monitor never turned back on and I didn't even get a desktop in the spice viewer. I tried to mess with Xorg.conf, but I have no idea what I'm doing in there so I just deleted it and removed the nvidia-driver package. So then I tried the nouveau driver again with KDE desktop. Same thing, tty1-tty6 works, but no desktop on the Monitor attached to the nvidia card. The only thing I haven't tried is blacklisting the stock radeon driver on CentOS, because I read that the radeon cards like to take over other cards.

Here's my lspci -nn info:
http://pastebin.com/4q8YipyF

/etc/default/grub
http://pastebin.com/e6fyJMHq

/usr/local/bin/vfio-bind
http://pastebin.com/2c7TSX8D

and my Debian 8 machine settings from virt-manager
http://pastebin.com/kRez8pCq

I think thats it. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated since I can't seem to find the relevant info anywhere else. I guess this stuff is still pretty new.

pepsifx357
Posts: 3
Joined: 2015/01/06 14:50:47

Re: KVM VGA Passthrough halfway working

Post by pepsifx357 » 2015/01/09 02:34:11

I've played around some more and after a few restarts I've got this error that crops up while the Debian guest's kernel is loading:

http://pastebin.com/TCwjHQgv

I removed virt-mangers pci passthrough of the video card, restarted the host, then started the guest, then shut the guest down, added the passthrough device back and it's back to the problem on my first post. After restarting the guest again I get this error.

pepsifx357
Posts: 3
Joined: 2015/01/06 14:50:47

Re: KVM VGA Passthrough halfway working

Post by pepsifx357 » 2015/01/16 03:39:26

bumpity :D

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