Xen users - May 2008 - Release 0.9.0 of GPL PV Drivers for Windows

I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for Windows.
This release involved a fairly big rewrite of the stuff that talks to
Windows as I changed from WDF to WDM. WDF is a newer framework from
Microsoft which makes it easier to write drivers as a lot of the state
management stuff is done for you. It also means shipping a great big dll
around with the drivers (note the difference in size between this and
the previous version), and makes it really hard to do some things. With
any luck eventually these drivers will be buildable under Linux using
something like MinGW, which wouldn''t have been possible under WDF.

*** WARNING *** Just to spell it out clearly, do not use these drivers
on a production DomU. And if you use them on a production Dom0, make
sure you have good backups. There was a bug that made my Dom0 freeze for
5-10 minutes (no lasting damage when it unfroze though). That bug is
fixed now but it''s always possible that there could be others ***
WARNING ***

Almost everything that was working before should be working now, but
obviously this version hasn''t seen nearly as much testing. The one
thing
that definitely is not working is disabling the drivers - you''ll get a
crash if you try that or if you try to upgrade from this version to the
next one. I''ll get on to that eventually.

To upgrade from a version less that 0.9.0, you''ll really need to clean
your system of any old drivers. The supplied uninstall_0.8.x.bat might
do the trick - you''ll need to copy it into the directory you installed
the 0.8.x drivers from though before you run it. Failing that, email me
and I''ll help if I can.

On a clean system, install.bat should do the install, much the same as
before. There is no ''stub'' driver at the moment, so
you''ll be prompted
for drivers for the ''vfb'' and ''console''
devices. Just ignore that for
now. Without /GPLPV specified in the boot.ini the xenvbd and xennet
drivers will just sit in ''Failed to start. Code 10'' state. See
the next
paragraph for why.

Also changed in this release is a different approach to xenhide which
hides the QEMU ATA and network PCI devices (and the xen devices when
GPLPV is specified). Hopefully this should put an end to the problem of
duplicate disks and the resulting corruption. At the moment it will
leave ''hidden'' devices visible with a yellow exclamation mark,
because
of the way it fails them. I''ll fix that too (by hiding them - the
yellow
exclamation mark will still be there if you tell windows to show hidden
devices)

You can download from http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/ , and I''ve
also created a few wiki pages - still pretty bare at the moment but you
can see where I''m going at http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindows
.

Enjoy!

James


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Hi James,

Working fine on my Ubuntu 7.10, self compiled Xen 3.2 with Fedora 8''s
Dom0
kernel 2.6.21, DomU standard Windows XP SP2 all critical patches applied.

As mentioned, standard devices got a yellow exclamation mark, PV drivers are
activated and working fine. System also boots fine without the /gplpv
switch.

Thanks for the great work!

Emre

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 9:26 AM, James Harper
<james.harper@bendigoit.com.au>
wrote:
> I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for
Windows.
> This release involved a fairly big rewrite of the stuff that talks to
> Windows as I changed from WDF to WDM. WDF is a newer framework from
> Microsoft which makes it easier to write drivers as a lot of the state
> management stuff is done for you. It also means shipping a great big dll
> around with the drivers (note the difference in size between this and
> the previous version), and makes it really hard to do some things. With
> any luck eventually these drivers will be buildable under Linux using
> something like MinGW, which wouldn''t have been possible under WDF.
>
> *** WARNING *** Just to spell it out clearly, do not use these drivers
> on a production DomU. And if you use them on a production Dom0, make
> sure you have good backups. There was a bug that made my Dom0 freeze for
> 5-10 minutes (no lasting damage when it unfroze though). That bug is
> fixed now but it''s always possible that there could be others ***
> WARNING ***
>
> Almost everything that was working before should be working now, but
> obviously this version hasn''t seen nearly as much testing. The one
thing
> that definitely is not working is disabling the drivers - you''ll
get a
> crash if you try that or if you try to upgrade from this version to the
> next one. I''ll get on to that eventually.
>
> To upgrade from a version less that 0.9.0, you''ll really need to
clean
> your system of any old drivers. The supplied uninstall_0.8.x.bat might
> do the trick - you''ll need to copy it into the directory you
installed
> the 0.8.x drivers from though before you run it. Failing that, email me
> and I''ll help if I can.
>
> On a clean system, install.bat should do the install, much the same as
> before. There is no ''stub'' driver at the moment, so
you''ll be prompted
> for drivers for the ''vfb'' and ''console''
devices. Just ignore that for
> now. Without /GPLPV specified in the boot.ini the xenvbd and xennet
> drivers will just sit in ''Failed to start. Code 10''
state. See the next
> paragraph for why.
>
> Also changed in this release is a different approach to xenhide which
> hides the QEMU ATA and network PCI devices (and the xen devices when
> GPLPV is specified). Hopefully this should put an end to the problem of
> duplicate disks and the resulting corruption. At the moment it will
> leave ''hidden'' devices visible with a yellow exclamation
mark, because
> of the way it fails them. I''ll fix that too (by hiding them - the
yellow
> exclamation mark will still be there if you tell windows to show hidden
> devices)
>
> You can download from http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/ , and
I''ve
> also created a few wiki pages - still pretty bare at the moment but you
> can see where I''m going at
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindows
> .
>
> Enjoy!
>
> James
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>


-- 
Emre Erenoglu
erenoglu@gmail.com


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James,


James Harper wrote:
> 
> I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for
Windows.
> 
Cool, we are getting closer, and then further back:

I''ve just tested this on a fresh W2k3 install, and I don''t
have any
duplicate disk issues! Device Manager reports only on Xen PV disk..

However now my networking doesn''t work:

I have the new Xen Net driver installed, but its saying:

Windows Cannot Load the driver for this hardware: The driver maybe corrupt
or missing (Code 39)

The driver tab confirms version 0.9.0.0

The realtek device also won''t start, but I assume thats because the Xen
Net
driver has disabled it?

Also, not sure if this is relavent, The Bus Master IDE Controller is saying
this device cannot start (Code 10)..

I''m tried on this on rhel51 (32bit dom0 & domU) and also rhel52
beta (64bit
dom0 & 32 bit domU) with the same results.

W2k3 is fully upto date with Microsoft..

Cheers for all the good work!

James Shirley


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View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/Release-0.9.0-of-GPL-PV-Drivers-for-Windows-tp17299947p17311028.html
Sent from the Xen - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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> 
> I''ve just tested this on a fresh W2k3 install, and I
don''t have any
> duplicate disk issues! Device Manager reports only on Xen PV disk..
Excellent!
> 
> However now my networking doesn''t work:
D''oh
> I have the new Xen Net driver installed, but its saying:
> 
> Windows Cannot Load the driver for this hardware: The driver maybe
corrupt
> or missing (Code 39)
Hmmmm... not sure at this point. Can you check that the correct .sys
file is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers?
> 
> The driver tab confirms version 0.9.0.0
> 
> The realtek device also won''t start, but I assume thats because
the
Xen
> Net driver has disabled it?
> 
> Also, not sure if this is relavent, The Bus Master IDE Controller is
> saying
> this device cannot start (Code 10)..
Yes for both of those, that is xenhide at work.

James

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James,

> Hmmmm... not sure at this point. Can you check
that the correct .sys

> file is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers?

Yes I have the 4 xen*.sys files there, xennet is one
of them..

James

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James Harper schrieb:
> I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for
Windows.
> This release involved a fairly big rewrite of the stuff that talks to
> Windows as I changed from WDF to WDM. WDF is a newer framework from
> can see where I''m going at
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindows
> .......
> 
> Enjoy!
Oh yeah, looks like it works quite fine, get usefull speeds between my 
Linux fileserver (on the same xen box, on the same small raid5 so he 
needs to read/write at the same time) and my Win2008 x64 test Dom, 
(somewhat around 20+MB/s)
OOo_2.4.0_src_core.tar.bz2 needs just 5 or 6 seconds to copy onto the 
testbox as well as onto the filer from the testbox.
So far nice work james.
Go on!

Florian
> 
> James
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> 


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On Sunday May 18 2008 03:26:26 am James Harper wrote:
> I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for
Windows.
Yet another interesting problem. Neither the uninstall for 0.8.9 or the 
uninstall_0.8.x from 0.9.0 completely remove the devices no longer used by 
0.9.0, uninstalling being done having booted w/o /gplpv. Rebooting w/ /gplpv 
leaves only the xenstub devices.

The problem begins when I notice that, while mouse input works, keyboard input 
is totally non-existent. I suppose I can limp along in IE by double-clicking 
on form fields to bring up previous entries, and with the aid of saved 
passwords. However, cmd.com is totally useless, and thus no benchmarking or 
command line configuration.

The real problem comes when I try to reboot from w/ /gplpv to w/o /gplpv - I 
get a BSOD:

DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
[...]
*** STOP: 0x0000009F (0x00000500,0x00000002,0x82592730,0x825C7E50)

(no driver name mentioned)

But then when I destroy and try to recreate the domu, ''xm''
complains:

Error: Not enough memory is available, and dom0 cannot be shrunk any further

nor does ''xm mem-set'' do anything - ballooning is totally
non-functional, and
I have to reboot dom0.

Rebooting dom0, creating domu w/o /gplpv, and uninstalling xenstub in Device 
Manager doesn''t change the symptoms. First killing the controlling
qemu-dm,
then doing an xm destroy seems to avoid the xm problems. The keyboard is 
functional when booting w/o /gplpv. Booting w/o /gplpv, and then rebooting 
works.

Oh, and - I''m sure you haven''t worked on this - but to repeat,
I still can''t
read a cd/dvd in an attached drive.

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James Harper wrote:
> I''ve just put up the latest release of the GPLPV drivers for
Windows.
> This release involved a fairly big rewrite of the stuff that talks to
> Windows as I changed from WDF to WDM. WDF is a newer framework from
> Microsoft which makes it easier to write drivers as a lot of the state
> management stuff is done for you. It also means shipping a great big dll
> around with the drivers (note the difference in size between this and
> the previous version), and makes it really hard to do some things. With
> any luck eventually these drivers will be buildable under Linux using
> something like MinGW, which wouldn''t have been possible under WDF.
>
> *** WARNING *** Just to spell it out clearly, do not use these drivers
> on a production DomU. And if you use them on a production Dom0, make
> sure you have good backups. There was a bug that made my Dom0 freeze for
> 5-10 minutes (no lasting damage when it unfroze though). That bug is
> fixed now but it''s always possible that there could be others ***
> WARNING ***
>
> Almost everything that was working before should be working now, but
> obviously this version hasn''t seen nearly as much testing. The one
thing
> that definitely is not working is disabling the drivers - you''ll
get a
> crash if you try that or if you try to upgrade from this version to the
> next one. I''ll get on to that eventually.
>
> To upgrade from a version less that 0.9.0, you''ll really need to
clean
> your system of any old drivers. The supplied uninstall_0.8.x.bat might
> do the trick - you''ll need to copy it into the directory you
installed
> the 0.8.x drivers from though before you run it. Failing that, email me
> and I''ll help if I can.
>
> On a clean system, install.bat should do the install, much the same as
> before. There is no ''stub'' driver at the moment, so
you''ll be prompted
> for drivers for the ''vfb'' and ''console''
devices. Just ignore that for
> now. Without /GPLPV specified in the boot.ini the xenvbd and xennet
> drivers will just sit in ''Failed to start. Code 10''
state. See the next
> paragraph for why.
>
> Also changed in this release is a different approach to xenhide which
> hides the QEMU ATA and network PCI devices (and the xen devices when
> GPLPV is specified). Hopefully this should put an end to the problem of
> duplicate disks and the resulting corruption. At the moment it will
> leave ''hidden'' devices visible with a yellow exclamation
mark, because
> of the way it fails them. I''ll fix that too (by hiding them - the
yellow
> exclamation mark will still be there if you tell windows to show hidden
> devices)
>
> You can download from http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/ , and
I''ve
> also created a few wiki pages - still pretty bare at the moment but you
> can see where I''m going at
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindows
> .
>
> Enjoy!
>
> James
>   
Hi James

I''ve finally found some time to test these new drivers on my system - 
64bit dom0 Ubuntu Hardy w/xen 3.2; domU Windows 2003 i386 (SBS).  I 
couldn''t boot Windows after installing the drivers, ether with or 
without the /gplpv boot option.  Startup stalled on the first screen of 
windows starting, the black screen with the moving progress bar before 
it switches to graphics mode.  The progress bar stopped moving and it 
never switched to graphics mode.  I let it run for about 3minutes before 
"xm destroy"ing it.  Normal boot is about 1:45 to the Windows login
prompt.

The drivers appeared to install OK in Windows - no errors or anything.  
Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your continued efforts 
on developing these drivers.


-Scott


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> Hi James
> 
> I''ve finally found some time to test these new drivers on my
system -
> 64bit dom0 Ubuntu Hardy w/xen 3.2; domU Windows 2003 i386 (SBS).  I
> couldn''t boot Windows after installing the drivers, ether with or
> without the /gplpv boot option.  Startup stalled on the first screen
of
> windows starting, the black screen with the moving progress bar before
> it switches to graphics mode.  The progress bar stopped moving and it
> never switched to graphics mode.  I let it run for about 3minutes
before
> "xm destroy"ing it.  Normal boot is about 1:45 to the Windows
login
> prompt.
> 
> The drivers appeared to install OK in Windows - no errors or anything.
> Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your continued
efforts
> on developing these drivers.
> 
Can you send me your config?

James


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James Harper wrote:
>> Hi James
>>
>> I''ve finally found some time to test these new drivers on my
system -
>> 64bit dom0 Ubuntu Hardy w/xen 3.2; domU Windows 2003 i386 (SBS).  I
>> couldn''t boot Windows after installing the drivers, ether with
or
>> without the /gplpv boot option.  Startup stalled on the first screen of
>> windows starting, the black screen with the moving progress bar before
>> it switches to graphics mode.  The progress bar stopped moving and it
>> never switched to graphics mode.  I let it run for about 3minutes
before
>> "xm destroy"ing it.  Normal boot is about 1:45 to the Windows
login
>> prompt.
>>
>> The drivers appeared to install OK in Windows - no errors or anything.
>> Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your continued efforts
>> on developing these drivers.
>>
> 
> Can you send me your config?
> 
> James

Here it is:
name = "05-sbs2003"
uuid = "076d4e2a-e07e-0540-9437-6e00f787dc64"
memory = 480
vcpus = 1
builder = "hvm"
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
boot = "c"
pae = 0
acpi = 1
apic = 1
device_model = "/usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm"
vfb = [ "type=vnc,vncunused=1" ]
disk = [ "tap:aio:/vserver/domains/sbs2003/sbs2003.img,hda,w" ]
vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:00:00:11,bridge=xenbr0,type=ioemu" ]
rtc_timeoffset=36000   # AEST
#rtc_timeoffset=39600    # AEDST
usb=1
usbdevice="tablet"

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On Tuesday May 20 2008 08:04:20 am Scott McKenzie wrote:
> I''ve finally found some time to test these new drivers on my
system -
> 64bit dom0 Ubuntu Hardy w/xen 3.2; domU Windows 2003 i386 (SBS).  I
> couldn''t boot Windows after installing the drivers, ether with or
> without the /gplpv boot option.  Startup stalled on the first screen of
> windows starting, the black screen with the moving progress bar before
> it switches to graphics mode.  The progress bar stopped moving and it
> never switched to graphics mode.  I let it run for about 3minutes before
> "xm destroy"ing it.  Normal boot is about 1:45 to the Windows
login prompt.
Actually, this sounds like an intermediate error I had. After you install 
0.9.0, you have to make sure none of the old 
\windows\system32\drivers\xen*.sys files are still there - anything with a 
date older than 5/18/08. Since you can''t boot the domu, you will have
to
losetup/kpartx/mount -t ntfs-3g to remove anything besides xenhide, xenpci, 
xennet or xenvbd.

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jim burns wrote:
> On Tuesday May 20 2008 08:04:20 am Scott McKenzie wrote:
>   
>> I''ve finally found some time to test these new drivers on my
system -
>> 64bit dom0 Ubuntu Hardy w/xen 3.2; domU Windows 2003 i386 (SBS).  I
>> couldn''t boot Windows after installing the drivers, ether with
or
>> without the /gplpv boot option.  Startup stalled on the first screen of
>> windows starting, the black screen with the moving progress bar before
>> it switches to graphics mode.  The progress bar stopped moving and it
>> never switched to graphics mode.  I let it run for about 3minutes
before
>> "xm destroy"ing it.  Normal boot is about 1:45 to the Windows
login prompt.
>>     
>
> Actually, this sounds like an intermediate error I had. After you install 
> 0.9.0, you have to make sure none of the old 
> \windows\system32\drivers\xen*.sys files are still there - anything with a 
> date older than 5/18/08. Since you can''t boot the domu, you will
have to
> losetup/kpartx/mount -t ntfs-3g to remove anything besides xenhide, xenpci,
> xennet or xenvbd.
>   
This was a virgin Windows domU, the GPL PV drivers have never been 
installed.


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