Xen + Fedora 16 Dom0 + Nvidia Drivers

mjkeeler · #1 16th December 2011, 02:52 AM

I have installed Fedora 16 along with the binary nvidia drivers (on a dell e6520 with an NVS 4200). Booting into straight fedora works ok.

I then installed all of the xen packages. When booting into xen the nvidia drivers don't work.

Has anyone tried a similar setup or know of any fix?

Catastrophe · #2 17th December 2011, 02:12 PM

are you using the rpmfusion drivers or the standard nvidia binary ones?

if you are using the binaries, move to the rpmfusion ones, make sure you have both the kmod-nvidia and akmod-nvidia packages installed.

mjkeeler · #3 17th December 2011, 03:30 PM

The rpm fusion drivers. The nouveau drivers don't play well with gnome 3 and the 4200m.

yaconsult · #4 2nd January 2012, 11:56 PM

Let's compare notes...

I'm new to playing with xen. Found out about the grub2 menu bug that creates extra grub2 menu entries - that was confusing.

When I boot the xen kernel, everything look OK until after it draws the desktop background. Then, instead of the login box, I get the sad face "Oh, no! Something is wrong!" message.

I'm thinking of removing the nvidia drivers to see if xen works if they are not being used.

But I don't know if it's going to cause a problem that I built a new initrd image based on the comments in the nvidia blacklist file.

yaconsult · #5 14th January 2012, 01:27 AM

I found that if I switched back to the nouveau drivers, I can boot the xen kernel and everything works as expected. When I try booting with the nvidia drivers from rpm fusion, it hangs after switching into graphics mode.

So currently, I have to switch back and forth between the graphics drivers to use the xen kernel.

Has anyone been successful in getting the xen kernel to work with the nvidia drivers from rpmfusion? If so, how did you do it?

Becks21 · #6 1st April 2012, 03:44 PM

I just updated Fedora 16 x64 to the new kernel 3.3.0.8.. (I am new to Fedora/Linux).
This is the first kernel version I was able to boot into Xen 4.1.2 Linux 3.3.0.8, but only via the Nouveau driver, using the akmod-nvidia driver fails.. up to now no kmod-nvidia drivers are available for kernel 3.3.0.8.. it's just too fresh I guess..

May anyone explain to me please why for Xen the kmod-nvidia drivers are necessary (which I guess) ?
Thx a lot..

edit:
Oh.. and if the kmod-nvidia becomes available, how can I assure that for the Xen only the kmod is used and for normal Fedora the akmod? I am new and playing around and very likely will mess things up.. ;-)

yaconsult · #7 2nd April 2012, 06:51 AM

You might be interested in the other thread I started in which I posted how to switch back and forth between nouveau and nvidia video drivers when switching between Xen and non-Xen kernels:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275482

Some people seem to have been able to get the nvidia driver running under Xen by building it with an option for the purpose. I'm not sure whether or not this still works as I haven't had a chance to play with it. If you do, you might report back with your fedora results:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=199735

Becks21 · #8 7th April 2012, 10:41 AM

Thx for your reply..
I think too that (a)kmod-nvidia drivers are not working at all under xen..

So I will try to get forward with option 2.. but I am having a hard time getting the Nouveau-driver running.. this stuff is really a major pain..

graphics hardware is a Nvidia GTX580 and a 8400GS.. my plan was to use the 8400GS to boot to Fedora desktop via the Xen kernel and forward the GTX580 via vga-passthrough to windows 7 dom.. but it looks like I am lightyears away from that..