Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Wayne Feick]

I recently saw the following:

   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment

This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 

Specifically, I currently run Linux as my desktop and Windows in a
VMware guest for software like Adobe Premiere. This arrangement lets me
do video editing, but not video capture from firewire since VMware
doesn't support it. If KVM allows me to run a Windows guest that will be
able to capture video from the firewire port, I'll be switching away
from VMware.

Please CC me directly in any reply since I don't subscribe to this list.

Thanks,
Wayne.

Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Amit Shah]

Hello Wayne,

On (Tue) Jan 27 2009 [21:15:22], Wayne Feick wrote:
> I recently saw the following:
> 
>    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment
> 
> This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
> anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 

Is the firewire port on a PCI card? If yes, it *might* work. We've only
tested network device assignment so far; if you have a system with VT-d,
you can give it a try yourself.

Amit.

Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Wayne Feick]

On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 20:45 +0530, Amit Shah wrote:
> Hello Wayne,
> 
> On (Tue) Jan 27 2009 [21:15:22], Wayne Feick wrote:
> > I recently saw the following:
> > 
> >    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment
> > 
> > This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
> > anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 
> 
> Is the firewire port on a PCI card? If yes, it *might* work. We've only
> tested network device assignment so far; if you have a system with VT-d,
> you can give it a try yourself.
> 
> Amit.

Thanks for the response, Amit. Yes, firewire tends to sit on the PCI
bus. Looking at the reported flags for my notebook CPU (Core 2 T7200) I
don't see vt-d so I guess it won't work on this system.

I've only started playing with non-VMware virtualization recently, and
I'm fast learning that not all Intel CPUs are equal when it comes to
virtualization support.

Wayne.

Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Nikola Ciprich]

Hi Wayne,
You should be looking for "vmx" flag in cpuinfo.
Your CPU should support it, so You should be fine unless
it's disabled in BIOS.
BR
nik

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 09:05:36AM -0800, Wayne Feick wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 20:45 +0530, Amit Shah wrote:
> > Hello Wayne,
> > 
> > On (Tue) Jan 27 2009 [21:15:22], Wayne Feick wrote:
> > > I recently saw the following:
> > > 
> > >    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment
> > > 
> > > This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
> > > anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 
> > 
> > Is the firewire port on a PCI card? If yes, it *might* work. We've only
> > tested network device assignment so far; if you have a system with VT-d,
> > you can give it a try yourself.
> > 
> > Amit.
> 
> Thanks for the response, Amit. Yes, firewire tends to sit on the PCI
> bus. Looking at the reported flags for my notebook CPU (Core 2 T7200) I
> don't see vt-d so I guess it won't work on this system.
> 
> I've only started playing with non-VMware virtualization recently, and
> I'm fast learning that not all Intel CPUs are equal when it comes to
> virtualization support.
> 
> Wayne.
> 
> 
> --
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> 

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-------------------------------------
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Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Glauber Costa]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Nikola Ciprich <extmaillist@linuxbox.cz> wrote:
> Hi Wayne,
> You should be looking for "vmx" flag in cpuinfo.
> Your CPU should support it, so You should be fine unless
> it's disabled in BIOS.
> BR
> nik

No. vmx and vt-d are different things.

vmx is needed to run kvm, vt-d, for kvm+passthrough.

-- 
Glauber  Costa.
"Free as in Freedom"
http://glommer.net

"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."

Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[Michael Tokarev]

Amit Shah wrote:
> Hello Wayne,
> 
> On (Tue) Jan 27 2009 [21:15:22], Wayne Feick wrote:
>> I recently saw the following:
>>
>>    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment
>>
>> This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
>> anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 
> 
> Is the firewire port on a PCI card? If yes, it *might* work. We've only
> tested network device assignment so far; if you have a system with VT-d,
> you can give it a try yourself.

JFYI... I tried several simple devices here, all worked.  But all were
without using DMA.  Namely, an old wireless card (11Mbps), internal
PCI dialup modem (not softmodem, courier sportster 56k), a 6-serial-ports
PCI card, and an old USB-1.1 PCI card.  Like this:

03:06.0 Serial controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division 56K FaxModem Model 5610 (rev 01) (prog-if 02)
	Subsystem: 3Com Corp, Modem Division Device 00a2
	Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 20
	I/O ports at ec00 [size=8]
	Kernel driver in use: serial
	Kernel modules: 8250_pci

With stock kernel-2.6.28 and kvm-83.

Sure thing it is less and less interesting since only very few devices
does not use DMA nowadays.  But I don't have any hardware with IOMMU
or VT-D.

/mjt

Re: Does KVM PCI Device Assignment allow guests to access firewire?

[David S. Ahern]

Wayne Feick wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 20:45 +0530, Amit Shah wrote:
>> Hello Wayne,
>>
>> On (Tue) Jan 27 2009 [21:15:22], Wayne Feick wrote:
>>> I recently saw the following:
>>>
>>>    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment
>>>
>>> This looks like it might allow guests to access a firewire device. Can
>>> anyone confirm or deny whether that will be the case? 
>> Is the firewire port on a PCI card? If yes, it *might* work. We've only
>> tested network device assignment so far; if you have a system with VT-d,
>> you can give it a try yourself.
>>
>> Amit.
> 
> Thanks for the response, Amit. Yes, firewire tends to sit on the PCI
> bus. Looking at the reported flags for my notebook CPU (Core 2 T7200) I
> don't see vt-d so I guess it won't work on this system.
> 
> I've only started playing with non-VMware virtualization recently, and
> I'm fast learning that not all Intel CPUs are equal when it comes to
> virtualization support.

Handy reference for Intel processors and the features each specific
model has:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/index.htm


david

> 
> Wayne.
> 
> 
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>