VMware Cloud Community
jamesanctil
Contributor
Contributor

Hardware passthrough causing crash...Cnic_register...

Hey Guys,

First time posting here. Love vmware. When it works right.

Anyway, Everytime i enable passthrough for my Ati HD5830 and restart the vmbox, the hangs at "CNIC_REGISTER"....Why god why???

I was able to passthrough my usb 3 controller ok...

Also another question if i were to passthrough a peice of hardware taht vmware was utualizing (say my nic card) at the same time woudl this cause a crash...

Reply
0 Kudos
7 Replies
jamesanctil
Contributor
Contributor

lot of views and no replys, that was my first post here...did i post like a newb or something?

Anyone have any ideas...also

it seems sometimes when i am shutting down guest systems esxi will freeze.

(do i have to dissconnect my pass-through usb / disconnect usb devices before i shut down?)

Reply
0 Kudos
psychic99
Contributor
Contributor

I upgraded from 4.1 (502727) to 5.0 (504890) and was trying to get an ATI 5450 to work.  I couldn't in 4.1 so I tried it in the latest 5.0.  Well I am getting the console to lock up in cnic_register and eventually a PSOD.  In any case, I cannot power up the VM I was passing through the ATI card to, and the console locks @ cnic_register, so I will have to shelve the idea for a while.  I also had 3d enable in the guest VM, but that didnt matter, because of the console flakiness.

So this latest update is definately a problem.  One cannot complain becuase GPU passthrough is not officially supported, however VMware should consider it because I know a lot of people who are trying to do it for HTPC.  If VMW is ever going to get on consumer devices (laptop, home servers), that issue will need to be solved.  Xen I hear works, but not hyper-V.  So you can look @ Xen if you are not tied down to VMW. I actually use VMW for work, so I'm stuck with the big company blues and slow innovation train.

For example I run W7MC in a VM, and have to run an xbox as an extender because of the graphics thingy.  As anybody who knows W7MC SUCKS on extenders because MSFT doesn't know how to do VDI properly (they sorta used the hacked Citrix model), but without the performance--but that is beside the point.  If I could pass the graphics card to the VM, at least in my main TV I could have decent response time.  Alas, I may just keep the FIOS DVR or build a dedicated W7MC server (I detest that idea).

Mobo: 2x Supermicro X9SCM-F with E1230 Sandy bridge, 16GB ECC.  1x ATI card (supermicro doesnt have 16x slots).

I hooked the card into a PCI slot not going through the cougar point bridge chip--direct PCIe port--(as you would in a normal say Z68 mobo in 16x), and it shows up that way in VC.  I was going to try going through CP, but I dont think it will matter.  It's broken on this platform.

Reply
0 Kudos
GBowman
Contributor
Contributor

Thought I'd reply to this as it was the only post that came up in a search of google.  I have had an HD5770 running in Passthru for about 6 months on 4.1, bomb proof as my HTPC guest front end allowing me to run VM's in the back ground more effectivly than with VMWare Server on a Windows 7 Host. Upgraded to 5.0 all went well.  Added my cards to passthru and got this same problem.  Loader halted after Cnic register but the machine came up as I could vSphere into it.  Removing the HD5770 from the Passthru made it boot all the way.

I didnt bother actualy trying to run any machines as I have to get this back up for the wife and kids to watch TV in the morning, reverted back to 4.1 for now.  Was hoping 5.0 would lift the 2gb limit on the guest with passthru as I play the od game and in the future that will need more ram.  I'm not complaining as I know its not supported, its a shame as it works so well on my 4.1 box, I would use it on my desktop aswell if it had VT-d.

Reply
0 Kudos
jamesanctil
Contributor
Contributor

Well i have removed the dell sas 5/ir raid card...all my problems have seem to gone away. Also i am using esxi 5 not 4.

Reply
0 Kudos
rich_999
Contributor
Contributor

I am getting this same issue.. ESXi 5.1 crashes on reboot and gets stuck on a screen that shows ' chic_register loaded successfully'


I was trying to get GPU passthrough working.


Question is.. Coudl you recover from this issue or did you have to reinstall ESXi?

Reply
0 Kudos
vk51
Contributor
Contributor

Exact same thing here, except trying to pass through a ASM1062 [whitebox build - need extra SATA ports]. Read that the card worked (although not on HCL). Don't know if it's the card, or something with ESXi, but it's showing the exact same thing as the original poster [freeze @ cnic_register...]

Reply
0 Kudos
zXi_Gamer
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi guyz. I have seen this thread multiple times and I have tried on my setup and following is the observation I had noted:

When the onboard or the primary Graphics unit is given as passthrough and the server is rebooted, during reboot, after the loading of the cnic_register driver, it would be the time of the graphics card to get register or the display to be handed over to vmkernel. But we have made the graphics unit as passthrough, hence the display driver is NOT taken by the vmkernel, but Left For Alive Dead. Smiley Happy

Meaning that the server will continue to perform only that the user will not be able to see anything at all in the DCUI. I was able to confirm this by having a serial port attached and observed that the ESX server was still booting and the ip was accessible and the server manageable.

To revert the settings when you have made the graphics unit passthrough, do a ping on the server during reboot, as usual after 90 secs or so, the server will start replying to ping. Now, disable the graphic unit from passthrough and you are good to go.

Hope that helps,

_zXi_

Reply
0 Kudos