[vfio-users] vfio PCI passthrough NVIDIA K420 GPU problems

[Daniel Pocock]

On 24/02/16 21:58, Alex Williamson wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Bronek Kozicki <brok at spamcop.net
> <mailto:brok at spamcop.net>> wrote:
> 
>     On 24/02/2016 15:41, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>         Hi,
> 
>         I'm trying to use PCI passthrough to give an NVIDIA GPU to a VM with
>         qemu / KVM.  I've summarized my environment below and the error
>         I get is
>         near the bottom.  Any help would be appreciated.
> 
>         There are a few guides I've been referring to already:
>         https://wiki.debian.org/VGAPassthrough
>         https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/
>         https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
>         https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768
>         http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/VGA_device_assignment
> 
> 
> 
>     Hi Daniel
> 
> 
>     I'm successfully passing through two Quadro M5000 (to two instances
>     of Windows 10), looking at
>     http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/Quadro_Certified/361.91/361.91-win10-quadro-grid-release-notes.pdf
>     (page 9) it is not obvious that this would work for either your K420
>     or mine M5000. One gotcha - when starting Windows I do not see boot
>     screen at all, only Windows logon scren after nVidia drivers had
>     loaded. Explanation is in Alex's email sent to this list on 6th Feb
>     2016, subject "No boot screen on Quadro M5000?" - basically passed
>     through Quadro cards are meant to be secondary  only (I use them as
>     only card, though). However this small quirk aside, this works for
>     me very well.
> 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately K420 falls into the gap of unsupported and unknown between
> GeForce, which are clearly unsupported, but we know how to make them
> work, and Quardo K2000+, which are supported.  Typically Quadro cards
> don't work as primary like GeForce do, and the NVIDIA driver will pull a
> Code 43 on them, so it probably requires some combination of secondary
> plus hiding KVM & Hyper-v (or changing hyper-v vendor info) to make it
> work.  I'll note though that K420 is a GK107GL, as is the K2000, so
> x-pci-device-id might be an interesting experiment.  And of course, the
> most important guide was missed from the list, the one at
> vfio.blogspot.com <http://vfio.blogspot.com> ;)  Thanks,
> 


Thanks for all the replies about this

What do you mean by primary vs secondary, is that documented somewhere?
 Do you mean I need some other card to be primary in the VM?

I have two cards I can use for this VM, the K420 and a Quadro 2000.

The Quadro 2000 is mentioned favorably in the Xen guide[1], am I likely
to have more luck with that than the K420?  The Quadro 2000 is a HP card
and HP provides a BIOS download[2] too.

Regards,

Daniel


1.
http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough_Tested_Adapters#Nvidia_display_adapters

2. ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp57001-57500/sp57154.exe