home
products
contribute
download
documentation
forum
Home
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
All posts
Latest activity
Members
Registered members
Current visitors
Donate
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Search titles only
By:
Menu
Log in
Register
Navigation
Install the app
Install
More options
Contact us
Close Menu
Forums
HTPC Projects
HTPC Projects
Whole house technology solution
Contact us
RSS
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="fujistick" data-source="post: 601851" data-attributes="member: 65261"><p>With the Xen/VGA passthorugh setup I described, the server and client would be on 2 separate VMs, both running on the same hardware. Because they are logically separate, if the client locks up for whatever reason, the client VM could be rebooted or powered down (in a virtual sense) remotely via my laptop, while the server VM continues on recording, etc.</p><p></p><p>From what I remember reading about VT-d (Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O), even if the passed through hardware has a fault (e.g. graphics card while playing a game), normally this would bring down the machine, but with VT-d, it’s isolated to just that VM. Other VMs and their associated passed through hardware (e.g. server with tv cards), are oblivious to the problem and continue as normal.</p><p></p><p>Basically, the only difference would be that instead of having a big shiny physical power button to push, you would have to do it remotely from another PC (i.e. laptop).</p><p></p><p>This is all well and good, but I can’t get it to work. I’ve spent the better part of the past week loosely going through this guide: <a href="http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2010/03/26/steps-to-try-xen-4-0-0-release-candidate-8-on-ubuntu-lucid-10-04-64-bits/" target="_blank">Steps to try Xen 4.0.0 Release Candidate 8 on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 64 Bits – blog.xen.org</a></p><p></p><p>Major hurdles included:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Taking 2 or 3 days to figure out why none of the Xen options were showing up in the kernel configuration (make menuconfig) before compiling it.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I had inadvertently downloaded the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 Beta 1, and not the required 64-bit version.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Typo in the instructions.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">“make dep-pkg” should be “make deb-pkg”.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When the Xen hypervisor and kernel etc was correctly configured in the bootloader (Grub 2) and the system booted, it seem to lockup just before showing the graphical login prompt for domain 0. It had changed from text mode to a graphic mode, but didn’t get to displaying the background image/login prompt. Booting on my freshly built kernel without the hypervisor worked fine.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I still don’t know why, but at a guess it probably had something to do with the X server (the bit the does the graphic desktop) which I didn’t need or want. I could ssh in using PuTTY (<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/" target="_blank">PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client</a>) on my laptop to do everything so it wasn’t such a big problem.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCI passthrough of a PCIe TV tuner card to a VM worked OK. In TV Server config on the VM I could use Manual Control to Start TimeShift, then from my laptop using VLC I could connect to that stream with no problems. However, pass-through of the graphics card didn’t work so well. When I started the VM, the screen would go blank, but that was it. The VM seemed to not do anything more. Rebooting the VM and/or the whole system didn’t seem to fix it. Reconfigure the VM not to pass through the graphics card, and it works fine again (minus the graphics card).</li> </ul><p></p><p>This is where I’m at now. Given that it was a release candidate of the Xen hypervisor on a beta version of the OS, it’s hardly surprising some things didn’t work smoothly. Maybe this will work better when it’s had time to stabilise a bit, or when it’s integrated into a linux distro.</p><p></p><p>For those interested, the following sites were very helpful:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Xen_Virtualization_Essentials" target="_blank">Xen Virtualization Essentials - Virtuatopia</a> - Once Xen is installed, this describes all the configuration required to get a base VM created and running. Particularly useful is the sections on configuring and running a HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) for windows guests.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/FrontPage" target="_blank">FrontPage - Xen Wiki</a> - lots of good stuff in this wiki, like the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo" target="_blank">VTdHowTo - Xen Wiki</a> and <a href="http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough" target="_blank">XenPCIpassthrough - Xen Wiki</a> - describes the configuration required to get PCI passthrough to work.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough" target="_blank">XenVGAPassthrough - Xen Wiki</a> - graphics card passthrough.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Xen4.0" target="_blank">Xen4.0 - Xen Wiki</a> - this page is rather empty and wasn’t so useful <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />, but may have some detail in it once it’s actually released.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank">Google</a> - enough said.</li> </ul><p></p><p>So where does that leave me. Well I could go back to the 2 physical PC’s setup. The server PC having the TV tuner’s and all the hard drives plugged into the motherboard taking up all the SATA ports, without the RAID card. This would run either ESXi 4 (with individual drives – no RAID functionality), or the latest stable Xen 3.4.2 (with software RAID of the drives) to provide VMs. The client PC would have the sound and good graphics card, bluray drive, diskless boot etc. Other then the diskless boot, I’ve done enough testing to know that this will work. However, it does leave me with no room to add more disk space when required in the future.</p><p></p><p>Or, I could just put everything together in one machine (including the RAID card) and run Windows 7 64-bit as the host OS, and run VMWare Server or similar for non MP stuff VMs. With this setup, reboots/locksups/crashes, etc will probably affect everything, but to be honest, my current single seat HTPC has been solid for quite a while now.</p><p></p><p>The only time my current setup has been rebooted in the past few months has been me installing the next group of windows updates every month or two, and when the dishwasher tripped the circuit breaker, thus the power went out. The biggest problem that stops TV recordings is running out of disk space for recordings and timeshifting, but that’s because I tend to set stuff up to regularly record, but forget to delete old recordings..</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="fujistick, post: 601851, member: 65261"] With the Xen/VGA passthorugh setup I described, the server and client would be on 2 separate VMs, both running on the same hardware. Because they are logically separate, if the client locks up for whatever reason, the client VM could be rebooted or powered down (in a virtual sense) remotely via my laptop, while the server VM continues on recording, etc. From what I remember reading about VT-d (Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O), even if the passed through hardware has a fault (e.g. graphics card while playing a game), normally this would bring down the machine, but with VT-d, it’s isolated to just that VM. Other VMs and their associated passed through hardware (e.g. server with tv cards), are oblivious to the problem and continue as normal. Basically, the only difference would be that instead of having a big shiny physical power button to push, you would have to do it remotely from another PC (i.e. laptop). This is all well and good, but I can’t get it to work. I’ve spent the better part of the past week loosely going through this guide: [url=http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2010/03/26/steps-to-try-xen-4-0-0-release-candidate-8-on-ubuntu-lucid-10-04-64-bits/]Steps to try Xen 4.0.0 Release Candidate 8 on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 64 Bits – blog.xen.org[/url] Major hurdles included: [LIST] [*]Taking 2 or 3 days to figure out why none of the Xen options were showing up in the kernel configuration (make menuconfig) before compiling it. [LIST] [*]I had inadvertently downloaded the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 Beta 1, and not the required 64-bit version. [/LIST] [*]Typo in the instructions. [LIST] [*]“make dep-pkg” should be “make deb-pkg”. [/LIST] [*]When the Xen hypervisor and kernel etc was correctly configured in the bootloader (Grub 2) and the system booted, it seem to lockup just before showing the graphical login prompt for domain 0. It had changed from text mode to a graphic mode, but didn’t get to displaying the background image/login prompt. Booting on my freshly built kernel without the hypervisor worked fine. [LIST] [*]I still don’t know why, but at a guess it probably had something to do with the X server (the bit the does the graphic desktop) which I didn’t need or want. I could ssh in using PuTTY ([url=http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/]PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client[/url]) on my laptop to do everything so it wasn’t such a big problem. [/LIST] [*]PCI passthrough of a PCIe TV tuner card to a VM worked OK. In TV Server config on the VM I could use Manual Control to Start TimeShift, then from my laptop using VLC I could connect to that stream with no problems. However, pass-through of the graphics card didn’t work so well. When I started the VM, the screen would go blank, but that was it. The VM seemed to not do anything more. Rebooting the VM and/or the whole system didn’t seem to fix it. Reconfigure the VM not to pass through the graphics card, and it works fine again (minus the graphics card). [/LIST] This is where I’m at now. Given that it was a release candidate of the Xen hypervisor on a beta version of the OS, it’s hardly surprising some things didn’t work smoothly. Maybe this will work better when it’s had time to stabilise a bit, or when it’s integrated into a linux distro. For those interested, the following sites were very helpful: [LIST] [*][url=http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Xen_Virtualization_Essentials]Xen Virtualization Essentials - Virtuatopia[/url] - Once Xen is installed, this describes all the configuration required to get a base VM created and running. Particularly useful is the sections on configuring and running a HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) for windows guests. [*][url=http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/FrontPage]FrontPage - Xen Wiki[/url] - lots of good stuff in this wiki, like the following: [LIST] [*][url=http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo]VTdHowTo - Xen Wiki[/url] and [url=http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough]XenPCIpassthrough - Xen Wiki[/url] - describes the configuration required to get PCI passthrough to work. [*][url=http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough]XenVGAPassthrough - Xen Wiki[/url] - graphics card passthrough. [*][url=http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Xen4.0]Xen4.0 - Xen Wiki[/url] - this page is rather empty and wasn’t so useful ;), but may have some detail in it once it’s actually released. [/LIST] [*][url=http://www.google.com/]Google[/url] - enough said. [/LIST] So where does that leave me. Well I could go back to the 2 physical PC’s setup. The server PC having the TV tuner’s and all the hard drives plugged into the motherboard taking up all the SATA ports, without the RAID card. This would run either ESXi 4 (with individual drives – no RAID functionality), or the latest stable Xen 3.4.2 (with software RAID of the drives) to provide VMs. The client PC would have the sound and good graphics card, bluray drive, diskless boot etc. Other then the diskless boot, I’ve done enough testing to know that this will work. However, it does leave me with no room to add more disk space when required in the future. Or, I could just put everything together in one machine (including the RAID card) and run Windows 7 64-bit as the host OS, and run VMWare Server or similar for non MP stuff VMs. With this setup, reboots/locksups/crashes, etc will probably affect everything, but to be honest, my current single seat HTPC has been solid for quite a while now. The only time my current setup has been rebooted in the past few months has been me installing the next group of windows updates every month or two, and when the dishwasher tripped the circuit breaker, thus the power went out. The biggest problem that stops TV recordings is running out of disk space for recordings and timeshifting, but that’s because I tend to set stuff up to regularly record, but forget to delete old recordings.. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
HTPC Projects
HTPC Projects
Whole house technology solution
Contact us
RSS
Top
Bottom