[vfio-users] GPU passthrough to Windows problem: BOOT_DEVICE_INACCESSIBLE & general questions on passing physical disks

[Benjamin Slade]

Francesco Dicarlo <evilsephiroth at gmail.com> writes:

> Being on arch,I'll answer too...
> Please use this guide on arch because it is really well made.
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
>
> And for the sake of simplicity, ditch qemu scripts and use xml definitions for libvirt/virt-manager.
>
> You won't have problem. My setup...
>
> B85m-hd3 i5 4570 16gb ram
> Gtx 970
>
> Kernel Linux-Vfio-lts installed from aur. Edited pkgbuild to not patch i915. For ovmf it isn't needed...
> Windows 8.1/osx Yosemite with gpu passthrough working flawlessly...
>
> Passing through a physical drive isn't a good solution...
> Better create a partition or better a logical volume on an lvm for the drive and feed it to kvm...
> Remember to set type of storage raw and not qcow2...
>
> If you want I can share my win8 xml and my qemu Yosemite qemu command line...

Why is passing a physical drive not a good solution?  Part of the reason
I wanted to do it like that was to allow for the option of dual booting.

If you could share your win8 xml and qemu command line that would be
helpful, so that I have a good model to work from (since the guide on
reddit is based on the qemu script rather than an xml definition).