VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon

[taylorjonl]

I am using VMware ESXi and I am trying to setup a guest that is Windows 7 that will have an ATI Radeon video card passed through to it.  I actually had this working on a previous system but I had to reinstall.  Now when I do this the guest fails to start and I get the following:

Error message from localhost.XXXXXXXXXXX:
PCIPassthru 004:00.0: Guest tried to (null)map
32 device pages (with base address of 0xb5d20)
to a range occupied by main memory. This is
outside of the PCI Hole. Add pciHole.start =
"2909" to the configuration file and then power
on the VM.
error
12/23/2010 1:04:36 PM
media
User

When I do as it asks, the guest now starts but gets an immediate BSOD concerning memory management.  Any ideas on why this is occuring and why it worked at one point but now it fails?

[crankshaft]

OK, 1 day later and succeeded in getting VGA Passthrough working, I kept getting the agp BSOD, so decided some of the other suggestions to downgrade to V5.0, but of course my Network Adapter was not recognised, so tried patching with same package as with 5.1, but after trying the custom 5.0 iso and burning 5 DVDs, all failed, unlike 5.1 patched iso which worked first time, time spent on that probably 4 hours !

So I decided to revert back to 5.1 and started to make mods to the BIOS, after several individual changes and reboots, finally discovered that the onboard GPU needs to be disabled as well as multi GPU support and IGPU memory allocation must be set to auto EVEN IF IT IS DISABLED !!

Now have VGA Passthrough working on windows 7, but that it not my goal, I am aiming for XBMCbuntu - has anyone succeeded with this ??

I have tried passthrough both onboard and off=board USB controllers, it allows me to add them but after a reboot the PCI USB controllers are not available for passthrough, even after adding them priior to the reboot.

Also, NONE of the connected USB devices can be added to the VM, I have a feeling this project is only at it's very early stages !!

[larrebarre]

I'd say upgrade to 5.5!

I had big problems with 5.1 when it came to USB passthrough, and i was not alone. 5.1 was not a good option for passthrough.

I upgraded to 5.5 installed a HW 8 machine, and installed vmtools, installe drivers for my graphicscard and switched to only show the output on my TV (which is plugged into my HDMI on the graphicscard) and my problems was gone.

took me 15mins to solve the problems i had.

and USB passthrough is also not a problem, which i had on 5.1 aswell as you say.

Now i have other problems with 5.5, with NICs dissappearing from vswitches so my access to management dissappears and so on. but that might be my own fault aswell, i dont know. It's weird tho

But try that you can just downgrade if it doesnt work

[KRA77]

You should have tried xbmcbuntu in the first place. Mine just worked out of box, nothing needed. Booted up and displayed using my ATi card.

Windows on the other hand needed more work with software and driver installs.

[crankshaft]

Hah - yep that's exactly what I did, I reverted to win7 as I expected that to be easier, XBMCbuntu just went round and round in circles trying to start XBMC, failing and then reverting to the ubuntu desktop login.

But of course that was before I realised that you needed to disable IGPU in the Bios and set the ATI card as the primary card.

I have the iso on the data store and installation would take a few minutes, but now I am facing problems with NO USB devices recognised and USB passthrough not persistent after enabling & rebooting

[crankshaft]

Yep, confirmed, just ran xbmc live and it immediately switched to the passthrough VGA but no USB

[KRA77]

usb passthrough has issues with 5.1 - use 5.0 or 5.5

[kingsteve82]

‎Any reason for not going for 5.5 yet? If this is a free build, I could see that being a factor. I don't yet know of a way to run the web client without the vcenter appliance, which requires licensing.

Sent from my smartphone

From: crankshaft

Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 8:56 AM

To: King, Steven

Reply To: communities-emailer

Subject: New message: "VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon"

VMware Communities<https://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa>

VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon

created by crankshaft<https://communities.vmware.com/people/crankshaft> in VMware ESXi™ 4 - View the full discussion<https://communities.vmware.com/message/2319742#2319742>

[crankshaft]

spent the last 4 hours trying to downgrade to 5.0, network adapter not recognised and the driver package which I used to fix the problem on 5.1 does not appear to work on 5.0.

I am reluctant to upgrade to 5.5 because of the restricted support for the soon to be phased out vsphere client with no free web client on the horizon !

[jhusen]

It was my understanding that the vsphere client would work the same as it used to in previous versions of esxi and only the new features would be exposed in the web client.

I've found the vsphere client to still be sufficient for managing a single host running 5.5. Nonetheless, I rebuild my host and vcenter server vm every 60 days so I can have the web client. I have to remove and re-add the passthrough devices to my vms, but I only have a few that I pass through pci devices to so it's not that hard.

[crankshaft]

I switched to OSX about 10 years ago, windows is something that I use only when I have no other options, there's no client for OSX, no web client for ESXI. I have XP installed as a VM on Fusion to handle all of those "other programs" that won't run under OSX, one of those is the vsphere client.

In order to get the passthrough working, I 'evaluated" windows 7 as I assumed that it would be the most readily supported platform, but I have no desire, nor need to upgrade from XP to any newer windows platform, the Windows-only programs that I use run well under XP and I am not interested in battling with Microsoft's driver signing and other 'security' bells and whistles since it is simply something that I am forced to use when a program that I need does not run under OSX.

So if If I upgrade to 5.5, I am going to have to buy windows 7 or 8, and that is just a waste of time and money for me, to have to buy a new windows license just to manage my esxi virtual machine.

Sorry is this appears to be a rant, but vmware's client support is back in the dark ages, only supporting the latest windows platform is in my opinion very narrow minded.

I use VMWARE both in the office and at home for probably the last 4 years, but in view of the uncertainty regarding client support, are seriously now considering other open source options.

[technobro1]

For thoses who have a Realteak network card that is not recognized by 5.5 , you can inject a driver to the iso .

TinkerTry IT @ home | Install ESXi 5.5 with Realtek 8111/8168 NIC

[crankshaft]

Just found the answer to allow XP32 vsphere client to connect to 5.5 and have installed 5.5, USB passthrough is now persistent:

/etc/vmware/rhttpproxy/config.xml

[code]

<vmacore>

        <ssl>

            <cipherList>ALL</cipherList>

        </ssl>

</vmacore>

[/code]

Restart the service:

[code]

/etc/init.d/rhttpproxy restart

[/code]

[GBowman]

I have to say all these problems you are having are exactly the start I had to this challenge.  Nvidia cards will get as far as loading up in device manager but will always have the code 10 yelow exclamation mark as far as my experience goes.  ATI cards need some fine tunning of the bios settings and will still not work in all scenarios, I have 2 machines with multiple x16 slots where only 1 will work with VGA pass thru.  I then have an x58 board which has had 5 cards passed through no problems (4 x16 slots and an x1).

I am at 4.1 for my main system, over 2 years down and going strong as an HTPC, Asterisk, VPN, Sandbox, telecomuting, IP TV Server, NAS and home automation system.  I have tried all the others on my test machines and have had the same issues as others with USB on 5.1 so I am at 5.0 for those.  Thinking of adding a router VM aswell.

I beleive it is easier to add the network driver to a running machine so if possible fit a supported NIC for install then once ESXi is running you can add the driver for the Realtek and then remove (or pass through) the intel NIC.  Dont upgrade to hardware version above 8 if using 5.5 as versions 9 and 10 require the (not free) web interface.

[crankshaft]

Thanks, been working on this now for a week and made most progress in the last 2 days.

I have ended up with 5.5 and discovered that you only get one stab at defining your passthrough devices, after the initial choice and reboot, you cannot remove or add new devices to passthrough regardless of whether they are attached to any VM or not.

What probably everyone already knew ( and I missed ) is that as far as I can now tell, you cannot passthrough motherboard PCI Devices even if they are listed for passthrough, you can only passthrough addon cards.

I am now able to share a USB2.0 card and ATI GPU with a virtual machine, and the first VM will be an XBMC box running on ARCHLINUX, that is 90% done now and I am just customizing the Bluetooth and Infrared Remote Control that was previously handled with remoteBuddy and iRed on OSX.

So finally I am making progress, but there was a huge amount of trial and error involved to get this far !!

[crankshaft]

Need some help again, have just installed ARCHLINUX, it was previously running as a Virtual Machine using the vmware VGA driver, and I just enabled the GPU passthrough.

It is recognized but fails with the "[drm:radeon_get_bios] *ERROR* Unable to locate a BIOS ROM" error:

<pre>

[	2.040617] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[	2.040659] radeon 0000:13:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003)
[	2.041278] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (VERDE 0x1002:0x683F 0x174B:0x2312).
[	2.041295] [drm] register mmio base: 0xF7380000
[	2.041296] [drm] register mmio size: 262144
[	2.041321] radeon 0000:13:00.0: BAR 6: can't assign [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x0] (bogus alignment)
[	2.041333] radeon 0000:13:00.0: BAR 6: can't assign [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x0] (bogus alignment)
[	2.041335] [drm:radeon_get_bios] *ERROR* Unable to locate a BIOS ROM
[	2.041336] radeon 0000:13:00.0: Fatal error during GPU init
[	2.041338] [drm] radeon: finishing device.
[	2.041339] [TTM] Memory type 2 has not been initialized
[	2.057015] radeon: probe of 0000:13:00.0 failed with error -22

</pre>

Any suggestions on what to look for to solve this ? - it works under ubuntu with a fresh install, I have installed the xf86-video-ati drivers.

[crankshaft]

I solved this by removing the opensource ATI Drivers and installing the Catalyst Drivers.

[ciuly]

Was meaning to comment a while back but didn't get the chance.

Firstly, there is a document which some of us have posted in, which contains the builds, mostly the ones that work. The crucial part is MB + CPU and pretty much all ATI cards work, although if you want to be successful and starting with a new build and don't want to experiment, you should definitely use the build that appears the most in that document.

Second, having the hardware decided on, either by sticking to what you have or getting something based on above mentioned doc, you need to get the software running. As some have already mentioned, 5.1 has broken USB  passthrough (at least). So either use 5.0.x or 5.5 (I haven't tried this one yet). The easy way to experiment is to backup your VMs and use a USB stick to test the various esx versions/patches.

At the same time, you need to take into account some restrictions, the pciHole is one, and sometiems setting pciPassthru(x=0..n).msiEnabled = false helps as well (not just for GPU but other cards that you passthrough and error when installing drivers (I had to do this for a pcie usb card (or was it a sata card?).and my main passed through GPU card.

good luck with it.

PS: I'm busy lately trying to jump start a new project, protecting/controlling private/personal information through the use of virtual profiles.If anybody is interested, please check it out and follow the project on twitter, FB, WP, etc. Any comments/suggestions welcome on those sites so we don't pollute this topic (project home page: http://www.virtualprofile.org )

Sorry for the small advertisement, it's hard to get something new off the ground with no funds

[uyozTic]

@ciuly , where is this document you mention. thinking of moving up to 5.5, or at the lest check it out via a mem stick boot. that doc you mention, may prove useful if you can reply with its link. thanks

[ciuly]

that's weird. It used to be in my signature, which used to appear under every post I made. I checked now my profile and it is still there in the signature, but for some reason the signature is not showing up anymore. I checked the privacy policy and can't see anything wrong there. I did verify and the signature appears on my profile for all users. So maybe they removed that feature. Or maybe hidden in under some option somewhere which is opt-in and disabled by default. God only know.

anyway, the document url is : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqp_xYBwP_Y7dE5EclhtaDdIV09lNWxfODd1alRUTlE

[uyozTic]

got it. gee, could be (my) eyes for  all i know. any hoo, i got to your link. quite informative.

i've not gotten passthru to actually work yet via intel board and add-on ati cards. though i did finally get the latest linux mint to actually recognize one of the ati cards. a break through for me. not sure that vm is making much use of it though. your doc will shed more light. this whole passthru thing seems more trial and error for many of us.