Xen users - Sep 2008 - problem with GPLPV drivers > 0.9 in Win XP HVM

Hi,

today I tried to install the GPLPV drivers in a freshly installed XP SP1a HVM
machine, without luck, I tried these versions:
first, 0.9.11-pre17 and then 0.9.11-pre9, both with the same result:

In the hardware list, I saw the Xen PCI PV Driver marked with a yellow
exclamation mark, and when I clicked on it, I read:
Windows is unable to use the driver, it may be corrupped or missing (Code 39)
Additionally, under Other devices an Unknown device showed up, marked with a
yellow question mark

These were the only drivers > 0.9 I tested, but I guess, the others also will
have the same problem.

To make sure, to not make anything wrong, I copied over a fresh image of the XP
HVM guest, and started this one, and installed version 0.8.9 of the GPLPV
drivers, following the same procedure. After modifying boot.ini, and removing
the ioemu statements from the HVM config, the drivers were installed and used.

But there I observed the following in the hardware list:
The drive was renamed from "QEMU disk" to "Xen PV VBD SCSI Disk
Drive", but the driver still was the Microsoft driver from year 2001,
version: 5.1.2535.0.
The other Xen devices, Network card, PCI, Stub and EMU devices, are using the
Xen 0.8.9 driver.
Is that right that for the harddisk, the Microsoft driver is used?
I was also expecting a Xen driver there.

kind regards
Sebastian
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> 
> today I tried to install the GPLPV drivers in a freshly installed XP
SP1a
> HVM machine, without luck, I tried these versions:
> first, 0.9.11-pre17 and then 0.9.11-pre9, both with the same result:
All my testing has probably been done with XP SP2 or SP3. Are you able
to test these and see if it works? It may be that I introduced some
dependency on SP[23] somewhere along the way...
> In the hardware list, I saw the Xen PCI PV Driver marked with a yellow
> exclamation mark, and when I clicked on it, I read:
> Windows is unable to use the driver, it may be corrupped or missing
(Code
> 39)
> Additionally, under Other devices an Unknown device showed up, marked
with
> a yellow question mark
I would expect something like that if I was using a function that was
only available under SP2 and above...

James

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> 
> But there I observed the following in the hardware list:
> The drive was renamed from "QEMU disk" to "Xen PV VBD SCSI
Disk
Drive",
> but the driver still was the Microsoft driver from year 2001, version:
> 5.1.2535.0.
> The other Xen devices, Network card, PCI, Stub and EMU devices, are
using
> the Xen 0.8.9 driver.
> Is that right that for the harddisk, the Microsoft driver is used?
> I was also expecting a Xen driver there.
> 
GPLPV provides a driver for vbd, which is implemented as a windows
scsiport miniport driver. Windows queries every scsi address on the
scsiport driver, and xenvbd tells it that there is a single disk there.
Windows then provides a driver for the disk that it finds.

I hope that makes some sense :)

James

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> Hi,
> 
> today I tried to install the GPLPV drivers in a freshly installed XP
SP1a
> HVM machine, without luck, I tried these versions:
> first, 0.9.11-pre17 and then 0.9.11-pre9, both with the same result:
> 
> In the hardware list, I saw the Xen PCI PV Driver marked with a yellow
> exclamation mark, and when I clicked on it, I read:
> Windows is unable to use the driver, it may be corrupped or missing
(Code
> 39) 
> Additionally, under Other devices an Unknown device showed up, marked
with
> a yellow question mark
> 
> These were the only drivers > 0.9 I tested, but I guess, the others
also
> will have the same problem.
Okay I''ve found something that is probably the culprit. In recent
versions of GPLPV I make a call to a function called
''KeFlushQueuedDpcs'', which ensures that there is no pending
outstanding
work to be done by anything when the drivers shutdown or suspend.

My options are as follows:
1. Do nothing and state that GPLPV is only supported under SP2 or
greater for XP
2. Remove the call to ''KeFlushQueuedDpcs'' (I don''t
call it under W2K,
but nobody that I''m aware of has successfully run the drivers under W2K
anyway). This may or may not create instabilities in suspend/resume.
3. Try and find another way around the problem.

Do you have any reason why you need to use SP1 of XP specifically? SP1
broke a whole load of things... I think SP1a fixed a couple but IIRC a
lot of other things remained pretty broken until SP2 came out.

James


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Hi,
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: "James Harper" <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au>
> Gesendet: 12.09.08 08:44:01
> An:  <xen-users@lists.xensource.com>
> Betreff: RE: [Xen-users] problem with GPLPV drivers > 0.9 in Win XP HVM
> > 
> > today I tried to install the GPLPV drivers in a freshly installed XP
> SP1a
> > HVM machine, without luck, I tried these versions:
> > first, 0.9.11-pre17 and then 0.9.11-pre9, both with the same result:
> 
> All my testing has probably been done with XP SP2 or SP3. Are you able
> to test these and see if it works? It may be that I introduced some
> dependency on SP[23] somewhere along the way...
> 
> > In the hardware list, I saw the Xen PCI PV Driver marked with a yellow
> > exclamation mark, and when I clicked on it, I read:
> > Windows is unable to use the driver, it may be corrupped or missing
> (Code
> > 39)
> > Additionally, under Other devices an Unknown device showed up, marked
> with
> > a yellow question mark
> 
> I would expect something like that if I was using a function that was
> only available under SP2 and above...
after a loooong procedure, of activating and upgrading to SP2, I 
successfully installed the GPLPV drivers version: 0.9.11-pre17.

All the new devices have now the Xen driver when I checked after a reboot, 
but not the Disk. The disk renamed from QUEMU disk to Xen disk, but when 
I look at the used driver its from Microsoft. However, the SCSI block device
driver is using the Xen driver, so I''m not sure right now, whether this
is correct with the disk, or not.

thanks a lot for your fast help.

Sebastian

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Hi James,
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: "James Harper" <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au>
> Gesendet: 12.09.08 13:35:07
> An:  <xen-users@lists.xensource.com>
> Betreff: RE: [Xen-users] problem with GPLPV drivers > 0.9 in Win XP HVM
> > 
> > But there I observed the following in the hardware list:
> > The drive was renamed from "QEMU disk" to "Xen PV VBD
SCSI Disk
> Drive",
> > but the driver still was the Microsoft driver from year 2001, version:
> > 5.1.2535.0.
> > The other Xen devices, Network card, PCI, Stub and EMU devices, are
> using
> > the Xen 0.8.9 driver.
> > Is that right that for the harddisk, the Microsoft driver is used?
> > I was also expecting a Xen driver there.
> > 
> 
> GPLPV provides a driver for vbd, which is implemented as a windows
> scsiport miniport driver. Windows queries every scsi address on the
> scsiport driver, and xenvbd tells it that there is a single disk there.
> Windows then provides a driver for the disk that it finds.
> 
> I hope that makes some sense :)
Thanks for the explanation, sounds reasonable.
I just wanted to make sure that everything is fine here.

kind regards
Sebastian

> 
> James
> 

_____________________________________________________________________
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