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Hello. |
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|
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I posted this on the Xen Users mailing list, thought I'd try for a |
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different perspective from Gentoo users. |
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|
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I'm doing a fresh install of Xen on an AMD64 using Gentoo. I have an |
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nvidia graphics card. I want Dom0 to be a minimal system, installed |
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without Xorg or any other GUI applications. I'm hoping to set up Xen |
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with (at least) 3 guest domains -- one running servers for the network |
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(ntp, dhcp, bind, yp, etc.), one guest domain running my desktop with |
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Xorg and the third guest domain to be used for development & testing. |
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|
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What I'm hoping to find out is -- |
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1. does the above make sense? |
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2. I want to access the X-server on the desktop domU directly on tty7. |
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Is this possible? If so, how can I do this? |
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3. what are the things I need to watch out for? |
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4. Any list members running Xen? |
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|
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I've done some research and I'm aware I have to disable tls and compile |
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the system with specific compiler flags. If anyone has pointers to |
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documentation specific to what I want to do, that would be much |
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appreciated. |
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|
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One of the responses I received on the Xen-Users mailing list (from |
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Matts Peterssons, quote) -- |
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| No. The X-server needs to be the OWNER of all the graphics card, and |
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your Dom0 takes ownership of |
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| the graphics card very early on. There is two solutions that come to |
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mind: |
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| You could perhaps use a simple PCI graphics card for the Dom0 console, |
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and then give the DomU the |
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| nvidia card, but any shared hardware must be managed by one Domain |
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only (and everyone else talking |
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| through that domain to get access). Of course, this assumes that there |
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is an nVidia driver that works |
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| under Xen, which I don't think exists (yet) - and I very much doubt |
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that native kernel graphics drivers |
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| will work "out of the box" - as they probably do all sorts of "nasty" |
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things that Xen needs to be aware of. |
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| |
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| Or you can use vncserver/vncviewer to access your desktop machine. |
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|
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In one of the documents, I read, it indicated that, for example, if I |
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had 2 PCI network cards, and I wanted to have domU manage one of the |
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cards directly, there's a way of telling Dom0 to leave the management of |
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a particular PCI bus/device alone. Is it possible to do something |
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similar with the AGP adapter bus/card? But, given that I actually get |
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this to work, how do I go about getting desktop domU to gain control of |
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tty7 (or whatever, since all consoles are (I believe) controlled by |
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dom0. In other words, I'd like to have a direct pass-through, or |
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whatever one might call it. |
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|
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Could I achieve something similar by installing Xorg in dom0 and domU |
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and running XDMCP to connect to domU? This would mean a more complicated |
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package management scenario since Dom0 won't be a minimalist |
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installation anymore. I guess it all depends on how well the nvidia |
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drivers play with Xen. |
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|
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A later response (again from Matts Peterssons, quote) -- |
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| I very much doubt this [having DomU control the nvidia card] will work in actual |
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| practice [as I once read: In theory, there's no difference between theory and |
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| practice - in practice there is...] The difficulty would be to have a driver that |
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| is "Xen-clean" or "Xen-aware". Since the low-level driver for the graphics card |
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| is a kernel driver, it will have access to all sorts of kernel-internal information, |
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| and some of this is managed by Xen and should not be used directly by for instance |
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| a driver. Xen fixes this by patching [changing some macros in header-files is the |
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| key part of this] the kernel drivers that are included in the kernel itself. But |
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| the nVidia drivers are closed source, so they are not patchable by this method... |
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|
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I'd rather have DomU have control of my graphics card and have the |
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output of Dom0 be redirected to DomU via XDMCP or VNC (for X-Server) and |
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to virtual network consoles for the rest. |
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|
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But is this possible? |
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|
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TIA. |
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|
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Samir |
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-- |
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gentoo-amd64@g.o mailing list |