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MikeSpeedy
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-18-2011 08:18 AM

ESXi crash when starting vm with passthru device

My ESXi 4.1 crashes when I boot a virtual machine that has a PCI passthrough device. The vm has two PCI devices that are passed through to it. Booting with the first card works fine. As soon as the second card is added ESXi crashes.

purple_screen 001.png

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4 Replies
DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal
‎02-18-2011 08:39 AM

Try one card then remove and try the other. See whether you can change the interrupts the cards use. Disable any unused onboard components like serial and parallel ports to free interrupts.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal
‎02-19-2011 12:41 AM

What sort of cards are you adding?

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MikeSpeedy
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-22-2011 03:42 AM

The crash also happens if the only the second card is inserted (first card removed). BIOS doesn't support manual assignment of IRQs (or I wasn't able to find the setting). Disabling all unused onboard devices didn't help either (unfortunately).

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MikeSpeedy
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-22-2011 03:45 AM

It's the card described in this thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1686544#1686544

What's new: I found a tool with which I could tell the pci card to be a network card (so it was no longer only a bridge). With this trick the card was available for passthrough (and crash too Smiley Wink)

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