Esxi 5.1 pci passthrough broken

[HellMind]

I got a purple screen when I start up a vm with a pci device

With Esxi5 was working fine.

I tested it with 2 vm on different hosts ( but same hardware)

i7 2600 32gb

mb: dq67sw

What can I try

[dayunliang]

Hi Komandor,

I installed guest os ( WIN8 Enterprise x64) with EFI mode successfully, everything looks well. However, once i made the AMD HD5450 passthrough and restart the guest os, the screen went black for a while and then prompted 'Windows Boot Manager Unsuccessful' and enter into Boot Manager Screen. What happens?

Could you do me a favor to figure it out?

Thanks in advance.

[dd3]

Reserve all vm memory and add pcihole parameters into vmx (maybe not necessary, try the memory reservation only first).

[dayunliang]

Thx. dd3

If it`s vm settings --> resources --> memory ?

I have reserved all vm memory, but the issue is still existing.  :smileyconfused:

[dayunliang]

how can i add pcihole parameters into vmx? 

You`ll be appreciated if u can give me more detailed. Thx.

[dayunliang]

Hi Buddy,

Whether your Intel C600/X79 series chipset High Definition Audio Controller is on board or not? I`ve tried it on board but it doesn`t work properly, that it seems to be conflict with video card pass through and the screen went black and restart the VM.

[Vith]

It is on board, yes. Mine works fine with a 5870.

[dayunliang]

Any idea about my situation?

[Vith]

Sorry, I have no idea what is going on. I didn't do anything special, just a normal vm made with vsphere client (this may be important, the virtual hardware used is version 8), it had about 4gb ram and only the 2 devices in passthrough, with no other changes at all. The OS used was windows8 64bits, tested in bios and efi modes (efi is required for usb 2.0 to work though). After installing windows I installed the drivers from amd. Sound wasn't working properly, it was choppy. I disabled all the power management things in my efi, connected a mouse in passthrough and after that it worked fine. You could try using only 2gb of ram for the virtual machine, otherwise you may have to add the pcihole option to the config, although this is probably not the problem you are having.

Maybe your motherboard is not playing nice with the passthrough of the soundcard. I'm using a P9X79PRO. Maybe it's just the combination with that particular videocard. Other than trying the usual pciPassthru0.msiEnabled=False for your devices, the only thing may be testing other operating systems or using a usb soundcard / different videocard. It's not what you want to hear, but I really don't know (but maybe others do).

[FBoettger]

Hi,

did you do anything special?

I have also a ASRock z87 Extreme4 MB, 4770 i7,I build a new VM with EFI (also tried with BIOS), VMX-8 (also tried VMX-10), 2GB RAM and reserved the hole memory. I can only add the Video PCI Device, even if I try to connect the audio device, I get an error in vCenter Tasks. I boot Win8 x64 VM and can see the GPU in the hardware list. After I installed the drivers for my HD7750 I get an black screen. The VM restarts a few times and after that I get a bluescreen on vmware console.

[dd3]

@FBoettger

Dont do it in vCenter/Web client, connect directly with "old" client and add pci passthrough devices to VM there. I had the same issue.

[FBoettger]

Thanks, greate tip! Now I can add all PCI Devices

When I boot the VM, the display change from "no signal" to an black screen and I´m not able to see my Win8 desktop. Mouse and keyboard (USB Passthrough) works. When I connect to vmware console, I can see the Desktop (sometimes) and can control it with mouse and keyboard (Passthrough). Do you have any ideas?

[srwsol]

Based on this and other threads it sounds like it's not a good idea to upgrade a VM to hardware version 10 and lock yourself out of the viclient, unless you absolutely need one of the features only supported by version 10.

[dd3]

@FBoettger

Righ click on desktop > screen resolution and choose your display. Or try Winkey+P.

[FBoettger]

Thx, but I know how to expand the desktop

There ist something curios, when I try to boot the vm with attached PCI Devices without connecting the DVI oder VGA Cable, it works. I can see the console in vSphere Client. When I try to expand the desktop on the HD 7750 or connect the DVI or VGA Cable to the Graphiccard, the vm freeze and after some time it reboot. When I power on the vm with connected DVI or VGA Cable I can see the Windows boot prompt on vSphere Console, but after that the screen went black. No output on the display. I´ve found a blog entrie where somebody has successfully added a HD 7750 to a vm.

Which Graphic is your default in EFI of the host? Internal or PCI-E?

Did you configure anything else in EFI of the host?

I have only enabled VT-D. I´m currently installing a Win7 vm and will try it there.

In which PCI-Slot have you insert the graphiccard?

Which Version of ESXi is installed on your host?

Can you please explain your installation steps (vmware tools, when did you add the devices, when did you install the catalyst driver?

Thanks

EDIT: It works

I have to disable igpu and onboard audio in efi. Juhuuu

[wenlez]

I have similar issue here, 7850 passthrough and no signal on screen. I can view the VConsole though.

Here is my problem, if I switch the VM to EFI mode, it can not boot because It can't find a bootable device ( can't see the virtual disk nor the ISO image on a DVD device ).  When I see some of you can change the EFI settings, how do you change the EFI setting of a VM / guest?

If I need to disable iGPU, does that mean i have to do it from the host BIOS?

[technobro1]

EDIT : never mind it works

just got another iso of win8.... everything works flawless + speed improvement

--------------------------------------

I have the same issue.... i have been running win8 + gpu for a while

trying to upgrade  on 5.5 m trying to make a fresh win8 vm

trying to install win8 in efi and it WONT BOOT

install win8 in bios boot fine,

install win7 in efi boot fine

Is there anything special to do to install  win8 to boot in efi,  could it be my isot

is there any other settings then the bios efi / bios to change

[FBoettger]

Yes, you have to disable it in hosts bios/efi! I´ve also tried to change a vm from bios to efi but it doesn´t work. I have to build a new vm with efi. Maybe you can try building a new vm and attach your existing vmdk?!

[pbraren]

Glad it worked out!  Saw your comment, makes sense it wound up being a corrupt ISO, since I had tested EFI BIOS in VMs pretty heavily on ESXi 5.5, with good results (8TB or 62TB C: drive size not a problem), described here:

Using ESXi 5.5 to create “Golden Master” Windows 8.1 template VM with ease-of-use tweaks for your lab

TinkerTry.com/windows81vm

Wow, is that a 62TB drive in my home lab?

TinkerTry.com/is-that-a-62tb-drive-in-my-home-lab

and even VMware Workstation 10 can do 8TB virtual drive sizes now:

Using VMware Workstation (page 16)

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/desktop/ws10-using.pdf

although manual EFI BIOS tweaks are a bit harder than on ESXi 5.5 vSphere Web Client, manually adding

firmware = "efi"

to the vmx file, described also here:

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/457795

[AndySavage]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the community (only just registered) although I've been an ESX user for a number of years.

However, I'd like to ascertain as to whether I'm alone with the following issues or if anyone has any suggestions.

First my story;

I've been running an old dual core, 8GB ESXi 4 host for years at work as my development machine.

When I replaced this I had a plan to kill two birds with one stone - combine my 5 year old desktop PC and my development box in one.

VMDirectPath and ESX seemed like the way to go.  So my new DEV box arrived last week - a Core i7 3770 (Q77 chipset I believe) with 32GB RAM, and I have been battling to make it work as desired ever since.  The plan is to build a Windows 7 32-bit VM with 3GB RAM, with passed through GPU and USB for my desktop replacement.

I have only just today got the GPU pass-through working with thanks to posts from this community.  What I had been trying to do was use the onboard Intel HD graphics for the ESXi host console while passing through a PCIe GPU to the VM.  Turns out no combination of the onboard VGA and the four discrete GPUs I tried (Radeon HD4350, Radeon X1600, Radeon X800, GeForce 7300) would work.

HOWEVER, I discovered today that out of the four cards I could make the HD4350 work provided I disabled the onboard Intel.  So currently I have no way of directly view the host console as my primary (only) GPU is now allocated to pass-through.

The problem is that I appear to be unable to achieve everything I want from a single version of ESXi (haven't tried 5.1.  I'm primarily working with 5u2 and 5.5).

The following is what I can achieve with each...

5.0:

- Radeon HD4350 passes through as I want;

- Intel 7Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhance Host Controller - 1E2D passed through as I want and recognises keyboards, mice and flash drives;

- 3GB is unachievable. Same issues as others report - VM won't start.  Setting pciHole.start=1200 and pciHole.end=2200 will allow the VM to boot and you can see that it has 3GB however it states that only 1.17GB is usable (like the 3.xGB limit of 32bit OS's), however this VM should be displaying the full 3GB as usable.  I think this is something to do with pciHole.start/end values as by adjusting them I would end up with less than 1GB usable.  But so far I've been unable to figure out exactly what these settings mean to figure out how to get the available RAM I want.

5.5:

- Radeon HD4350 passes through as I want;

- Can set the desired RAM I want within the VM and it appears and is usable (within the 32bit constraints) without messing about with pciHole settings;

- BUT now my USB controller doesn't work.  Appears with the yellow exclamation mark and error 10 as others report.

5.0 is hindered with RAM constraint issues while 5.5 fixes that but prevents your USB controllers working?

Thanks for readying and any advice will be most welcomed!

Thanks guys.

Andy

[srwsol]

I have a backup box at my vacation home running ESXi 5.1 with that same chipset, and I was never able to get the onboard USB controllers to pass through properly.  I ended up buying a separate USB 3 controller and using it for pass through.  I haven't had a chance to try 5.5 on that box and won't until I get back there this winter.   The only thing I can suggest is to try putting the setting "pciPassthru0.msiEnabled=False"  in the VM and see if that works (if you have more than 1 PCI pass through device in the VM you may have to change the 0 to whichever device number the USB controller is).   That setting is required on WinXP VMs no matter what to get a USB controller to work after being passed through, but it might help on the other ones.  I had already gotten the separate card before I found that setting, so I didn't get a chance to test it on a Win7 VM.