[vfio-users] Installing Catalyst prevents VM from booting.

[Brian Chow]

Konstantin,
  Thank you so much.  I had been struggling with this for 2 weeks now,
where I could get bios to post / MS Basic Adapter working, but both Win8.1
and Win10 would crash as soon as I installed the AMD drivers.  Your method
worked for me!  Win10 accepted the driver.

Just to add to Konstantin's post -- this is the qemu script I used to
start/install windows 10.

qemu-system-x86_64 \
        -name starscream \
        -enable-kvm \
        -m 8192 \
        -cpu host,kvm=off \
        -smp 4,sockets=1,cores=4,threads=1 \
        -drive
if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF-pure-efi.fd \
        -drive
if=pflash,format=raw,file=/home/bchow/kvm/starscream/OVMF-starscream.fd \
        -drive
file=/home/bchow/kvm/starscream/starscream.img,if=virtio,format=raw \
        -drive
file=/home/bchow/Win10_English_x64.iso,format=raw,id=win10cd,if=none
-device ide-cd,bus=ide.1,drive=win10cd \
        -drive
file=/home/bchow/virtio-win-0.1.110.iso,format=raw,id=virtiocd,if=none
-device ide-cd,bus=ide.1,drive=virtiocd \
        -device vfio-pci,host=01:00.0 \
        -device vfio-pci,host=01:00.1 \
        -usb -usbdevice host:24f0:0141 \
        -usb -usbdevice host:046d:c00e \
        -usbdevice tablet \
        -vga qxl \
        -boot menu=on \
        -show-cursor

---

After the OS install and unpacking the AMD drivers, and then killing the
VM, I modified the script to read -vga none instead of -vga qxl.




On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Konstantin Weber <konstantin-weber at gmx.de>
wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> first time posting on a mailinglist, so I hope this works out.
>
>
> A couple of days ago I had a simmilar issue with an amd gpu and windows
> 8.1. Maybe my notes could be helpful.
>
>
> Background:
> Hardware used:
> Xeon E3-1246v3
> MSI H97 Guard Pro
> Asus R9 280 DC2T
> 24 GB Ram (2x8 GB, 2x4 GB)
>
> Arch Linux with kenel 4.1.6-1
>
> I have a working Windows 8.1 virtual machine with gpu passthrough with
> an asus r9 280 dc2t.
> This one was created with a <4.0 kernel (3.18 I think), pci-stub,
> libvirt in qemu:\\\system over a year ago and has been running mostly
> without problems. I could update the gpu driver and the ccc without
> problems.
> After I recently read at aw's blog that libvirt now supports passthrough
> in user-session, i used vfio instead of pci-stub and could use the
> virtual machine in user mode.
>
>
> Actual issue:
> For testing purposes I then wanted to create another virtual machine,
> which then had the issue, that after installation of the gpu driver, the
> vm would not boot unless the gpu was removed from it.
> I used the same iso for installation, that I used for the working
> virtual machine. After some attempts I even copied the installer of the
> driver from one vm to the other, but it did not work.
>
>
> Some of the steps I tried were:
> - Installation of Catalyst 15.7.1 gave a bluescreen with
> "system_thread_exception_not_handled (atikmdag.sys)".
> - Attempted installation of the driver over the device manager resulted
> in an immediate restart without installing the driver.
> - Installation of the driver over the device manager in safe mode
> worked, but a restart without safe mode resultet in permanent restarts
> until the vm was forced shutdown.
> - Copying the installed files (not the installer) from the windows/...
> directories from the working one to the other one let me choose the
> driver in the device manager, but also resulted in permanent restarts
> until the gpu was removed from the vm.
> - Starting the virtual machine over the command line without
> virt-manager, installing the driver over device manager and rebooting
> worked once and then resulted in restarts.
>
> I tried for some days a couple of combinations of the above and some
> suggestions I found through google, but nothing helped.
>
>
> What finally did help was this:
>
> Start a fresh installation of windows 8.1 in qemu without libvirt. It
> contained only the minimum needed to start (cpu, ram ...; ovmf image;
> installation iso; virtual disk; qxl vga; gpu for passthrough with audio).
> During installation I disabled the windows setting for loading new
> drivers. After the installation I didn't restart, update or change any
> setting. The gpu had only the microsoft basic driver with a code 10 and
> did not show anything.
> I downloaded the 15.7.1 driver from amd, extracted it and stopped the
> installation.
> I opened the settings for resolution and disabled the output on the qxl
> gpu, which left me with no output.
> After that I killed and restarted the virtual machine, so the output was
> only on the r9 280 and installed the driver manually over the device
> manager. This worked fine and I had no bluescreen or restarts.
> After the installation I was able to reboot the virtual machine without
> problems and install the ccc including the hdmi driver. I could also
> enable the qxl gpu, install new drivers for it and install virtio drivers.
>
>
> My qemu start script now looks like this:
>
> qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 4096 -cpu host,kvm=off -smp
> 4,sockets=1,cores=4,threads=1 \
> -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/ovmf/OVMF-pure-efi.fd
> \
> -drive
>
> if=pflash,format=raw,file=/home/MYUSERNAME/.config/libvirt/qemu/nvram/WinTest_ovmf.fd
> \
> -drive
>
> file=/media/Daten/VirtuelleMaschinen/WinTest_ovmf.qcow2,if=virtio,format=qcow2
> \
> -vga qxl \
> -device vfio-pci,host=01:00.0 -device vfio-pci,host=01:00.1
>
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>
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