Vista/rtl8139 broken?

Vista/rtl8139 broken?

[Alistair John Strachan]

Hi,

I've been using ne2k with BSD/Linux/WindowsXP just fine with 
KVM-35/2.6.23-rc2, but when I try to run Vista, which doesn't support the 
ne2k any more, I tried switching to the rtl8139 emulation.

I observed that the rtl8139 emulation works fine in WindowsXP, so it's not 
broken. But it does not seem to work in Vista (x86). The host is AMD64/SVM. 
The way that it doesn't work is that no packets are sent/received over the 
interface, so the device does not route.

The only difference between XP and Vista's KVM startup is that for Vista I 
enable ACPI (necessary to install).

WindowsXP -->
kvm -no-reboot -localtime -no-acpi -m 256 -hda $IMAGE \
    -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*

Vista -->
kvm -no-reboot -localtime -m 512 -hda $IMAGE \
    -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*

The problem seems to be similar to a QEMU endian bug from some time ago, but I 
don't think that's the problem here. It looks like it's some sort of 
incompatibility between Vista and the rtl8139 emulation.

Any ideas? Does ACPI have anything to do with it?

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

137/1 Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh, UK.


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Re: Vista/rtl8139 broken?

[Jorge Lucángeli Obes]

On 8/18/07, Alistair John Strachan <alistair-T7eSMZptz7IqdlJmJB21zg@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been using ne2k with BSD/Linux/WindowsXP just fine with
> KVM-35/2.6.23-rc2, but when I try to run Vista, which doesn't support the
> ne2k any more, I tried switching to the rtl8139 emulation.
>
> I observed that the rtl8139 emulation works fine in WindowsXP, so it's not
> broken. But it does not seem to work in Vista (x86). The host is AMD64/SVM.
> The way that it doesn't work is that no packets are sent/received over the
> interface, so the device does not route.
>
> The only difference between XP and Vista's KVM startup is that for Vista I
> enable ACPI (necessary to install).
>
> WindowsXP -->
> kvm -no-reboot -localtime -no-acpi -m 256 -hda $IMAGE \
>     -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*
>
> Vista -->
> kvm -no-reboot -localtime -m 512 -hda $IMAGE \
>     -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*
>
> The problem seems to be similar to a QEMU endian bug from some time ago, but I
> don't think that's the problem here. It looks like it's some sort of
> incompatibility between Vista and the rtl8139 emulation.
>
> Any ideas? Does ACPI have anything to do with it?

http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Vista_Networking_Workaround

Basically, the rtl8139 emulation and the driver shipped with Vista
don't get along very well. The workaround suggests using ne2k_pci and
the Windows 2000 driver. There's a link to download the driver in the
wiki page, if it doesn't work you can try:

http://cablemodem.fibertel.com.ar/tamsyn/drivercd.iso

I've personally used that driver successfully.

Cheers,
Jorge

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Re: Vista/rtl8139 broken?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 12:31:14AM +0100, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using ne2k with BSD/Linux/WindowsXP just fine with 
> KVM-35/2.6.23-rc2, but when I try to run Vista, which doesn't support the 
> ne2k any more, I tried switching to the rtl8139 emulation.
> 
> I observed that the rtl8139 emulation works fine in WindowsXP, so it's not 
> broken. But it does not seem to work in Vista (x86). The host is AMD64/SVM. 
> The way that it doesn't work is that no packets are sent/received over the 
> interface, so the device does not route.
> 
> The only difference between XP and Vista's KVM startup is that for Vista I 
> enable ACPI (necessary to install).
> 
> WindowsXP -->
> kvm -no-reboot -localtime -no-acpi -m 256 -hda $IMAGE \
>     -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*
> 
> Vista -->
> kvm -no-reboot -localtime -m 512 -hda $IMAGE \
>     -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,script=/etc/kvm/kvm-ifup $*
> 
> The problem seems to be similar to a QEMU endian bug from some time ago, but I 
> don't think that's the problem here. It looks like it's some sort of 
> incompatibility between Vista and the rtl8139 emulation.

The rtl8139 driver was fixed in upstream QEMU a week or two back - it was
calculating checksums incorrectly which Vista didn't like.  The patch needs
to be applied to KVM too...

Dan.
-- 
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