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

[Hagbard Celine]

After seeing that the older version fixed the problem for John and
checking my archive of OVMF builds. I conclude that there is a
upstream regression that manifest first in versions between
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160323.b1631.ga7b1590.noarch.rpm and
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160419.b1737.gc4cc609.noarch.rpm, then gets
worse at newer versions. (Unless it is two issues, the first only
responsible for approx. 5 sec boot delay)

Timing form pressing Power-On in Virt-manager to the circle under win
10 logo shows:
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160323.b1631.ga7b1590.noarch.rpm: 18 sec
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160324.b1635.gf0bbcdf.noarch.rpm: 20 sec
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160419.b1737.gc4cc609.noarch.rpm: 25 sec
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160829.b2090.g5f53a7a.noarch.rpm: 87 sec

Also edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160510.b1805.g05b2f9c.noarch.rpm hangs with
no-cpu-usage, and
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160829.b2090.g5f53a7a.noarch.rpm is the first
version with cpu at 100% until windows starts booting.


2017-07-26 0:49 GMT+01:00, Blair Bethwaite <blair.bethwaite at gmail.com>:
> Is there an upstream OVMF bug for the root cause or is it still unknown?
>
> On 26 Jul. 2017 08:41, "John Koelndorfer" <jkoelndorfer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Good news, folks!
>>
>> Hagbard was kind enough to send an older build of OVMF he had lying
>> around
>> and suggested I try it. I did, and I am happy to report my VM boots very
>> fast again! For safekeeping, I have committed it to my GitHub repository:
>> https://github.com/jkoelndorfer/local-tools/blob/
>> master/workstation/vfio/edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20150804.b1143.
>> g8ca1489.noarch.rpm. I believe that when I did my initial VFIO setup, I
>> used a package from the AUR which may have been just old enough to avoid
>> the problem.
>>
>> I may experiment some and see if any of the qemu parameters provided by
>> Hristo make a difference with a current version of OVMF. For now, I'm
>> happy
>> my VM is booting quickly.
>>
>> Thanks very much for your help.
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:22 PM, John Koelndorfer
>> <jkoelndorfer at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> An update:
>>>
>>> The slow boot does not occur if I remove host devices from the virtual
>>> machine (without any other configuration changes). It doesn't matter
>>> whether GPU, USB, or both are passed in. Any device being passed in at
>>> all
>>> triggers the problem, so it's something related to the physical device
>>> passthrough I think.
>>>
>>> An older version of OVMF did not help, nor did booting a non-Windows OS.
>>> I tried two alternate versions of OVMF from here:
>>> https://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=edk2-ovmf. One
>>> from 2016 November, one from 2016 April. I initially did my last VFIO
>>> setup
>>> in 2016 July.
>>>
>>> I also tried the pc-i440fx machine, per Hristo's suggestion (though I
>>> tried 2.6, which was what my last configuration used).
>>>
>>> Hristo, it seems your setup is very similar to mine, so I have a few
>>> questions for you:
>>>
>>> * Are you using libvirt?
>>> * Could you send the qemu arguments for your VM?
>>> * What are your kernel boot parameters?
>>>
>>> My suspicion now is that libvirt is doing some extra configuration that
>>> I'm not. I looked at my old libvirt XML file and nothing is jumping out
>>> at
>>> me, so maybe it's a hardcoded default behavior.
>>>
>>> Thanks for all the suggestions so far, folks.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 4:03 PM, Hagbard Celine <hagbardcelin at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, just registered to the list to share my experience on this;
>>>>
>>>> I've been getting my OVMF builds from kraxel.org since
>>>> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20150804.b1143.g8ca1489.noarch.rpm and was
>>>> regularly updating when new builds came.
>>>> Somwhere around edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20151221.b1390.g5ba9f06.noarch.rpm
>>>> boot with large amounts of memory got slower.
>>>> And around edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160324.b1634.g3decba3.noarch.rpm the
>>>> EFI part of boot could last about 15min with 16GB assigned to VM out
>>>> of a total of 32GB. Lovering the assigned memory for VM to below 8GB
>>>> resulted in normal boot times.
>>>>
>>>> PS. The version numbers are approximations, my recollection is not
>>>> exact.
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> vfio-users at redhat.com
>>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>