AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Jerome Brown]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get Xen running on my workstation for testing purposes. I
can boot into a console fine, but when I try to start X using the Nvidia
binary drivers, I get a black screen and nothing else. I am unable to
switch to virtual consoles, but the system is still fully responsive. I
can ssh into the machine to do work on it at that point. The only way to
get the console back is to reboot the machine.

I am using the -testing branch at present. I have a Via 82xx
Motherboard, and have AGPGART and the VIA driver (CONFIG_AGP and
CONFIG_AGP_VIA) in my kernel config. The kernel is a xenified vanilla
2.6.10.

Any ideas as to where to look and/or what more information you would
like would be greatly appreciated.
-- 
Jerome Brown
Technology Architect
Hub.Net

P: +64  3 961-5116
M: +64 29 453 7663
F: +64  3 961-5129
E: jerome@hub.net.nz
W: http://www.hub.net.nz/
O: Level 4, 818 Colombo St, Christchurch, New Zealand
S: PO Box 1879, Christchurch, New Zealand


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Re: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jerome Brown wrote:

> Any ideas as to where to look and/or what more information you would
> like would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah, the Nvidia people will probably need to create a
special version of their driver that knows that virt
to phys conversion inside Xen virtual hosts is different.

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan


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Re: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Jacob Gorm Hansen]

Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jerome Brown wrote:
> 
> 
>>Any ideas as to where to look and/or what more information you would
>>like would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> 
> Yeah, the Nvidia people will probably need to create a
> special version of their driver that knows that virt
> to phys conversion inside Xen virtual hosts is different.
> 

Actually, for the Radeon driver all the important stuff seemed to have 
nice abstractions in the open source part of the driver, and I was able 
to get that running.

A few things that might help you when debugging:

a) before you run X, log in via SSH. Run it from there with just 'X' 
instead of via gdm or startx, and inspect its output and log files. Also 
have a look to see if any errors are reported by 'dmesg'.

b) If the driver loads a kernel module, check dmesg before and after the 
module is loaded (again, better to load it yourself by hand), and see if 
anything appears to be wrong.

Remember that you need to recompile the open source parts of the nvidia 
driver with the headers from the xenlinux kernel, or nothing will work, 
but also remember to keep the old non-Xen version around. Then you can 
boot normal linux, load the module and start X, and note down all the 
relevant parts of the logs, so that you can compare against them when 
trying to run things in Xen. Hopefully the difference between the logs 
should give a hint about what stuff goes wrong.

Finally, look in the open source part of the module for stuff like 
virt_to_phys*, remap_pfn*, etc., to see if there is anything obvious there.

There is a previous thread on the list about the Radeon, wherein Ian 
gives a lot of good clues about how to solve this problem.

Good luck!

Jacob


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Re: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Jerome Brown]

Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
<snip>
> Remember that you need to recompile the open source parts of the nvidia
> driver with the headers from the xenlinux kernel, or nothing will work,
> but also remember to keep the old non-Xen version around. Then you can
> boot normal linux, load the module and start X, and note down all the
> relevant parts of the logs, so that you can compare against them when
> trying to run things in Xen. Hopefully the difference between the logs
> should give a hint about what stuff goes wrong.

Well, I decided to start here. I removed the old driver and tried to
reinstall it, to be told that it requires MTRR to be enabled in the
kernel. (I must have accidently compiled against the wrong sources last
time). When I try to add this to with ARCH="xen" make menuconfig, the
option does not present itself. Is there a way to enable this in the
config, or would doing so be A Bad Thing (TM)? (I am also interested in
getting my soundcard going, and the ALSA sections are also not
displayed, but that is the next challenge!)

The good news is that I am writing this in X under a Xen kernel using
the opensource Nvidia Driver that is shipped with X.org - however it is
not as responsive, nor does the 3D work.

> Finally, look in the open source part of the module for stuff like
> virt_to_phys*, remap_pfn*, etc., to see if there is anything obvious there.

What would be obvious? I know a little C, but that is about the strength
of it. I'm willing to have a look and play, but don't really know what I
am doing in the internals of code :)

> Good luck!

Thanks. I think I need it! :)

Thanks again for the help

-- 
Jerome Brown
Technology Architect
Hub.Net

P: +64  3 961-5116
M: +64 29 453 7663
F: +64  3 961-5129
E: jerome@hub.net.nz
W: http://www.hub.net.nz/
O: Level 4, 818 Colombo St, Christchurch, New Zealand
S: PO Box 1879, Christchurch, New Zealand


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RE: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Ian Pratt]

 

> I'm trying to get Xen running on my workstation for testing 
> purposes. I
> can boot into a console fine, but when I try to start X using 
> the Nvidia
> binary drivers, I get a black screen and nothing else. I am unable to
> switch to virtual consoles, but the system is still fully 
> responsive. I
> can ssh into the machine to do work on it at that point. The 
> only way to
> get the console back is to reboot the machine.

I suspect your system is actually not in a veryu healthy state, with
some completely random area of memory being used for the frame buffer
:-(

Are there any open source components to the Nvidia drivers at all? You
could try recompiling those, and auditing them for broken memory
allocations or use of virt_to_phys, but you're probably screwed without
the full source...

Ian
 
> I am using the -testing branch at present. I have a Via 82xx
> Motherboard, and have AGPGART and the VIA driver (CONFIG_AGP and
> CONFIG_AGP_VIA) in my kernel config. The kernel is a xenified vanilla
> 2.6.10.


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RE: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Ian Pratt]

 
> Well, I decided to start here. I removed the old driver and tried to
> reinstall it, to be told that it requires MTRR to be enabled in the
> kernel. (I must have accidently compiled against the wrong 
> sources last
> time). When I try to add this to with ARCH="xen" make menuconfig, the
> option does not present itself. Is there a way to enable this in the
> config, or would doing so be A Bad Thing (TM)? (I am also 
> interested in
> getting my soundcard going, and the ALSA sections are also not
> displayed, but that is the next challenge!)

What version are you using? Xen/Linux has supported MTRR in the default
config for sometime.

I've never tried sound. There's a fair chance it will just work
providing it doesn't use ISA DMA.
 
Ian


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Re: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Nuutti Kotivuori]

Ian Pratt wrote:
>> (I am also interested in getting my soundcard going, and the ALSA
>> sections are also not displayed, but that is the next challenge!)

[...]

> I've never tried sound. There's a fair chance it will just work
> providing it doesn't use ISA DMA.

FWIW, ALSA works with no quirks with Nforce 2 soundchip, both S/PDIF
and normal outputs. Exactly like it works when not under Xen.

-- Naked




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Re: AGP & Binary Nvidia Drivers

[Jerome Brown]

Ian Pratt wrote:
>  
> 
>>Well, I decided to start here. I removed the old driver and tried to
>>reinstall it, to be told that it requires MTRR to be enabled in the
>>kernel. (I must have accidently compiled against the wrong 
>>sources last
>>time). When I try to add this to with ARCH="xen" make menuconfig, the
>>option does not present itself. Is there a way to enable this in the
>>config, or would doing so be A Bad Thing (TM)? (I am also 
>>interested in
>>getting my soundcard going, and the ALSA sections are also not
>>displayed, but that is the next challenge!)
> 
> 
> What version are you using? Xen/Linux has supported MTRR in the default
> config for sometime.

I'm using xen-testing from ~ 3 March, Kernel 2.6.10, as patched by the
Xen install script. When I rung my ARCH="xen" make menuconfig I don't
get presented with these options at all, and some of the menu options
when you select them don't display anything. Is this more likely to be a
make problem?

> I've never tried sound. There's a fair chance it will just work
> providing it doesn't use ISA DMA.

Is an onboard PCI chip, so I expect it will go!

Thanks in advance

-- 
Jerome Brown
Technology Architect
Hub.Net

P: +64  3 961-5116
M: +64 29 453 7663
F: +64  3 961-5129
E: jerome@hub.net.nz
W: http://www.hub.net.nz/
O: Level 4, 818 Colombo St, Christchurch, New Zealand
S: PO Box 1879, Christchurch, New Zealand


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