Virtualbox svga card in KVM

Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Sriram Murthy]

Hi,
     I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest. 

     Is this even feasible?. Any ideas on where I should start looking? 

Regards,Sriram

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Alon Levy]

> 
> 
> Hi,
>      I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm
>      as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load
>      the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest.
> 
>      Is this even feasible?. Any ideas on where I should start
>      looking?

I don't see why it wouldn't, sounds like a great idea. You can look at hw/qxl.c, hw/cirrus_vga.c, hw/vmware_vga.c as existing pci vga cards. Also this should go on qemu-devel (cc'ed).

> 
> Regards,Sriram
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> 

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Sriram Murthy]

Hi,
    I am looking into hw/vga.c and hw/vga-pci.c as a starting point in my effort to get vbox svga card into kvm. 

    However, given my very basic understanding of VGA/SVGA standards, can somebody throw some light on the inner workings of the std vga card in kvm?
    Also, are there any good urls/blogs/standards that I must be aware of before starting on this porting effort?
    Any help here will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks and regards,
Sriram



----- Original Message -----
From: Alon Levy <alevy@redhat.com>
To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 7:53 AM
Subject: Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

> 
> 
> Hi,
>      I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm
>      as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load
>      the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest.
> 
>      Is this even feasible?. Any ideas on where I should start
>      looking?

I don't see why it wouldn't, sounds like a great idea. You can look at hw/qxl.c, hw/cirrus_vga.c, hw/vmware_vga.c as existing pci vga cards. Also this should go on qemu-devel (cc'ed).

> 
> Regards,Sriram
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:53:21AM -0400, Alon Levy wrote:
> >      I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm
> >      as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load
> >      the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest.

I'm curious if the vbox SVGA card has features that existing QEMU
graphics cards do not provide?

Stefan

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Sriram Murthy]

For starters, virtual box has better SVGA WDDM drivers that allows for a much richer display when the VM display is local.
I am yet to completely understand both the KVM and the virtualbox SVGA card (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card), so I may not be the authority here.
-Sriram



----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
Sent: Friday, April 5, 2013 12:06 AM
Subject: Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:53:21AM -0400, Alon Levy wrote:
> >      I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm
> >      as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load
> >      the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest.

I'm curious if the vbox SVGA card has features that existing QEMU
graphics cards do not provide?

Stefan

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 04:52:05PM -0700, Sriram Murthy wrote:
> For starters, virtual box has better SVGA WDDM drivers that allows for a much richer display when the VM display is local.

What does "much richer display" mean?

Stefan

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Sriram Murthy]

By "richer display", I meant support for different resolution and color depth (including support for nonstandard resolutions as well).
-Sriram




----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
Cc: "kvm@vger.kernel.org" <kvm@vger.kernel.org>; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
Sent: Monday, April 8, 2013 3:46 AM
Subject: Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 04:52:05PM -0700, Sriram Murthy wrote:
> For starters, virtual box has better SVGA WDDM drivers that allows for a much richer display when the VM display is local.

What does "much richer display" mean?

Stefan

Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Peter Maydell]

On 6 April 2013 00:52, Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
> (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card)

Is it possible to implement it as an extension to the VGA
card device, or has it diverged incompatibly such that it
has to be its own separate device model?

thanks
-- PMM

Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Sriram Murthy]

The Virtualbox SVGA card was derived out of the KVM VGA card, so there are quite a few similarities (I am deliberately being vague here as I am still in the process of discovering the features of both these cards completely). Having said that, the APIs and the data structures themselves have been modified to add new features (like displaying a custom bmp as the VGA bootup logo) and it has a custom vga bios as well.
Also, it is better that it be its own separate device model, so that maintenance of the vbox code becomes easier later. Further, I am thinking on the lines of retaining the VIrtualbox SVGA card code as is, and write a small KVM abstraction layer, so that it will be easy to port the bug fixes into the vbox SVGA card later on. 
Any comments/suggestions welcome here.

-Sriram



----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
Cc: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>; "kvm@vger.kernel.org" <kvm@vger.kernel.org>
Sent: Monday, April 8, 2013 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM

On 6 April 2013 00:52, Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
> (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card)

Is it possible to implement it as an extension to the VGA
card device, or has it diverged incompatibly such that it
has to be its own separate device model?

thanks
-- PMM

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Yan Vugenfirer]

On Apr 6, 2013, at 2:52 AM, Sriram Murthy wrote:

> For starters, virtual box has better SVGA WDDM drivers that allows for a much richer display when the VM display is local.
Does it support S3 and S4 with Windows 8?

Yan.

> I am yet to completely understand both the KVM and the virtualbox SVGA card (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card), so I may not be the authority here.
> -Sriram
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
> To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
> Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
> Sent: Friday, April 5, 2013 12:06 AM
> Subject: Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM
> 
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:53:21AM -0400, Alon Levy wrote:
>>>      I am planning on bringing in the virtualbox svga card into kvm
>>>      as a new svga card type (vbox probably?) so that we can load
>>>      the VirtualBox SVGA card drivers in the guest.
> 
> I'm curious if the vbox SVGA card has features that existing QEMU
> graphics cards do not provide?
> 
> Stefan
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Andreas Färber]

Hi,

Am 08.04.2013 18:05, schrieb Sriram Murthy:
> The Virtualbox SVGA card was derived out of the KVM VGA card, so there are quite a few similarities (I am deliberately being vague here as I am still in the process of discovering the features of both these cards completely). Having said that, the APIs and the data structures themselves have been modified to add new features (like displaying a custom bmp as the VGA bootup logo) and it has a custom vga bios as well.
> Also, it is better that it be its own separate device model, so that maintenance of the vbox code becomes easier later. Further, I am thinking on the lines of retaining the VIrtualbox SVGA card code as is, and write a small KVM abstraction layer, so that it will be easy to port the bug fixes into the vbox SVGA card later on. 
> Any comments/suggestions welcome here.

Personally, I think that the connection between VirtualBox and QEMU is
very unidirectional if there is any... So code-wise our focus should
rather be to avoid code copies/divergence within our tree and to share
code with existing in-tree devices, especially if you are not paid to
continuously take care of this device once accepted into QEMU - that's
how I interpret PMM's question below.

There is nothing generally wrong with using KVM for guest driver
development or to make existing stripped-down guest images work at all
by adding such a special device.

However, proposing to adopt a random vendor's paravirtual graphics card
just because it has a few more resolutions and drivers on a particular
platform does not strike me as a big advantage over SPICE, VMware VGA or
past virtio-vga/-fb standardization attempts.

Regards,
Andreas

> 
> -Sriram
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
> To: Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com>
> Cc: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>; qemu list <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>; "kvm@vger.kernel.org" <kvm@vger.kernel.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 8, 2013 8:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM
> 
> On 6 April 2013 00:52, Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card)
> 
> Is it possible to implement it as an extension to the VGA
> card device, or has it diverged incompatibly such that it
> has to be its own separate device model?
> 
> thanks
> -- PMM

-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer; HRB 16746 AG Nürnberg

Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On 04/08/13 17:11, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 6 April 2013 00:52, Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card)
> 
> Is it possible to implement it as an extension to the VGA
> card device, or has it diverged incompatibly such that it
> has to be its own separate device model?

Not needed.  One just has to go write a windows driver.  The virtual
hardware can handle any resolution just fine.

cheers,
  Gerd

RE: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM

[Veruca Salt]

----------------------------------------
> Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:26:25 +0200
> From: kraxel@redhat.com
> To: peter.maydell@linaro.org
> CC: sriramsm@yahoo.com; stefanha@gmail.com; qemu-devel@nongnu.org; kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Virtualbox svga card in KVM
>
> On 04/08/13 17:11, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > On 6 April 2013 00:52, Sriram Murthy <sriramsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> (actually, the virtualbox SVGA card is based off of the KVM VGA card)
> >
> > Is it possible to implement it as an extension to the VGA
> > card device, or has it diverged incompatibly such that it
> > has to be its own separate device model?
>
> Not needed. One just has to go write a windows driver. The virtual
> hardware can handle any resolution just fine.
>
> cheers,
> Gerd
>

Time for a mea culpa; as a user I have extended my research. The KVM vga
 sdl combination is around native speed when tested on a like-for-like 
basis with intel igp.
Which probably explains why evrybody else is happy. :)
What we may have to do is fix up a gpu with drivers. Somewhat non-trivial.
Any suggestions folks?
Regards,
Simon
ps-vbox gives us another 12% flat out.

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