[vfio-users] Awful boot times, current OVMF to blame?

[A de Beus]

I would definitely agree that it is not OVMF or Arch:  I've seen a few reports of really long boots with Windows 10 recently on physical hardware.  I run Arch with Win 7 on OVMF and have not seen any change in boot time behavior.  My hardware is a bit older with a 4930k and Quadro K2000.  Can you try using Win 8 or 7 to see if you have the same problem?


> On Jul 24, 2017, at 9:18 AM, John Koelndorfer <jkoelndorfer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hey folks,
> 
> I've got a working GPU passthrough configuration with an Nvidia GTX 970 and i7 5820k on an up-to-date Arch Linux system. I'm not using any special packages, just the standard Linux kernel and qemu. The script I use for launching is out there on GitHub: https://github.com/jkoelndorfer/local-tools/blob/master/workstation/vfio/qemu-win10. If you browse the vfio directory you'll see some other relevant configuration bits.
> 
> I've got the setup in a good working state now, except for one thing that's bothersome. It takes a _long_ time for the VM to boot. As far as I can tell, the issue is linked to the OVMF firmware.
> 
> When I start the VM, it takes maybe 10-15 seconds for the GPU output to display anything on the monitor. In fact, if I want to get into the EFI setup I need to start mashing escape before anything even comes up. When I do finally get something, the VM is stuck on the TianoCore logo for another 30 seconds to a minute (haven't timed it).
> 
> Additionally, all of the CPUs that are assigned to the VM are pegged at near 100% until Windows finally starts to boot.
> 
> I've also noticed that boot times improve if I assign fewer cores or less memory to the VM.
> 
> Lastly I'd add that I recently reinstalled Arch on this machine and I had a working VFIO setup previously that did not experience this problem, though I was using libvirt and Windows 8 in that scenario. I'm now using plain qemu and Windows 10. Prior to the rebuild I hadn't used my Windows 8 VM in month or two, so I suppose it's possible that a recent update is the cause of this problem.
> 
> I tried ovmf-git from the AUR and that didn't seem to help. I checked dmesg and journalctl and I didn't see anything telling in the logs that would indicate a problem.
> 
> Anybody else encountered this problem and, if so, have you discovered a solution?
> 
> Many thanks!
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