Nvidia Drops Xen dom0 Support??

Nvidia Drops Xen dom0 Support??

[Gordan Bobic]

According to this:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/691565/linux/geforce-driver-problem-on-centos-6-4-with-xen-installed/2/

They could have at least had the decency to list what
the last driver that supprots Xen dom0 is or clarify
whether they intend to fix the problem, and if so, when.
Judging by the fact that they deleted my post asking
the exact same question, I'm guessing they don't
intend to fix it. The cynic in me thinks that keeping
up with the anti-detection measures in recent QEMU
and Xen has made it too difficult to distinguih between
dom0 and domU, so rather than uncripple domU operation
they dropped dom0 operation.

Between breaking domU operation in the driver based
on a device ID whitelist, issues like the above and
drivers that are just plain broken (I wasted a day
trying - unsuccessfully - to get GT630 cards to work
in dom0 on my machine - my old 8800GT works fine, GT630
doesn't) I am seriously itching to jump ship to ATI at
the earliest possible opportunity.

I wanted to reduce power and noise on my virtualization
machine and wanted a passively cooled dom0 card.
Preferrred choice was a GT630, but the driver would
randomly crash at startup. It'd boot and work fine
maybe one boot in 10, and completely irreversibly crash
the console (but not quite the whole machine, just
unkillable Xorg lock-up) the other 9/10 of the time.

So I'm voting with my feet - with a HD7450 in my dom0.
Yes, it's slow, laggy and the tearing between multiple
screens is much worse, but that's still a lot better than
not working at all. And I still get to save 70W.

Gordan