Xen users - May 2012 - Via Nano X2 Support?

Hi!

Recently got a Via VE-900 board from Fry''s.   It has a via nano x2 chip
on it, and suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization extensions.  
Has anyone worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be nice to have a
lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.

I tried booting into Xen, but it said it didn''t recognize the
processor.  I can post the full dmesg.

Here''s the /proc/cpuinfo (of one of the cores):


processor	: 0
vendor_id	: CentaurHauls
cpu family	: 6
model		: 15
model name	: VIA Nano X2 L4050 @ 1.4 GHz
stepping	: 12
cpu MHz		: 1400.052
cache size	: 1024 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 2
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 1
apicid		: 0
initial apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 10
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc rep_good
nopl pni monitor vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 popcnt rng rng_en ace ace_en
ace2 phe phe_en pmm pmm_en lahf_lm ida
bogomips	: 2801.77
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 128
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:


-Sam

On Sat, 2012-05-19 at 21:00 +0100, Sam Mulvey wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Recently got a Via VE-900 board from Fry''s.   It has a via nano x2
> chip on it, and suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization
> extensions.   Has anyone worked with this board yet?
>    I thought it would be nice to have a lower-powered, nearly silent
> Xen machine sitting on my desk.
> 
> I tried booting into Xen, but it said it didn''t recognize the
> processor.  I can post the full dmesg.
It might be useful to post the logs to xen-devel, in case it''s
something
simple...

I''m not sure I''ve heard of anyone using the Via implementation
of
Intel''s virt extensions. I expect that there will necessarily be some
amount of heavy lifting required by someone who is interested in this
platform.

Ian.
> Here''s the /proc/cpuinfo (of one of the cores):
> 
> 
> processor	: 0
> vendor_id	: CentaurHauls
> cpu family	: 6
> model		: 15
> model name	: VIA Nano X2 L4050 @ 1.4 GHz
> stepping	: 12
> cpu MHz		: 1400.052
> cache size	: 1024 KB
> physical id	: 0
> siblings	: 2
> core id		: 0
> cpu cores	: 1
> apicid		: 0
> initial apicid	: 0
> fpu		: yes
> fpu_exception	: yes
> cpuid level	: 10
> wp		: yes
> flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc rep_good
nopl pni monitor vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 popcnt rng rng_en ace ace_en
ace2 phe phe_en pmm pmm_en lahf_lm ida
> bogomips	: 2801.77
> clflush size	: 64
> cache_alignment	: 128
> address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
> power management:
> 
> 
> -Sam
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 3:00 AM, Sam Mulvey <sam@tacomatelematics.com>
wrote:
>
>
> Hi!
>
> Recently got a Via VE-900 board from Fry''s.   It has a via nano x2
chip on it, and suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization extensions.
  Has anyone worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be nice to have a
lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.
>
> I tried booting into Xen, but it said it didn''t recognize the
processor.
What happens when you use other virtualization solutions? e.g. kvm or
virtualbox, can they recognize and use the extension?

-- 
Fajar

On May 22, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 3:00 AM, Sam Mulvey
<sam@tacomatelematics.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Hi!
>> 
>> Recently got a Via VE-900 board from Fry''s.   It has a via
nano x2 chip on it, and suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization
extensions.   Has anyone worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be
nice to have a lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.
>> 
>> I tried booting into Xen, but it said it didn''t recognize the
processor.
> 
> What happens when you use other virtualization solutions? e.g. kvm or
> virtualbox, can they recognize and use the extension?
As it happens, a couple days ago I tried KVM since I knew it required processor
extensions to run, and I managed to get a Linux livecd to boot to console.

I set aside tonight to play with it.  I''ll be posting the dmesg to
Xen-devel in a bit.

-Sam




_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xen.org
http://lists.xen.org/xen-users

>>> On 19.05.12 at 22:00, Sam Mulvey <sam@tacomatelematics.com>
wrote:
> Recently got a Via VE-900 board.   It has a via nano x2 chip on it, and 
> suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization extensions.   Has
anyone
> worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be nice to have a 
> lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.
Looking around a little on their website, they don''t seem to
publish proper specifications. Without that, and neither having
access to a respective system to actually test eventual changes,
it would be rather presumptuous to try to extend Xen to support
this. (As a side note, we''re in feature freeze right now anyway,
so this could only be done for 4.3 anyway.)

I submitted a request for access to full documentation to them,
but based on past experience I''m not having much hope that any
response will show up (not to speak of a positive one).
> I''ve got it booting into Xen 4.1.2 and running PV dom0''s,
but I''m not able
> to load any HVM domains.    I posted this question first on Xen-users, and
I
> was asked if I was able to get KVM or VirtualBox working-- I''ve
tried KVM and
> managed to get it booting into a Linux livecd and a Windows installer.
That can likely be taken as confirmation of above statement about
being (reasonably) compatible with an already existing HVM
implementation.

Jan

On 19/05/12 21:00, Sam Mulvey wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Recently got a Via VE-900 board.   It has a via nano x2 chip on it, and
suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization extensions.   Has anyone
worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be nice to have a
lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.
>
> I''ve got it booting into Xen 4.1.2 and running PV dom0''s,
but I''m not able to load any HVM domains.    I posted this question
first on Xen-users, and I was asked if I was able to get KVM or VirtualBox
working-- I''ve tried KVM and managed to get it booting into a Linux
livecd and a Windows installer.
>
> Here''s the /proc/cpuinfo (of one of the cores):
>
> processor	: 0
> vendor_id	: CentaurHauls
> cpu family	: 6
> model		: 15
> model name	: VIA Nano X2 L4050 @ 1.4 GHz
> stepping	: 12
> cpu MHz		: 1400.052
> cache size	: 1024 KB
> physical id	: 0
> siblings	: 2
> core id		: 0
> cpu cores	: 1
> apicid		: 0
> initial apicid	: 0
> fpu		: yes
> fpu_exception	: yes
> cpuid level	: 10
> wp		: yes
> flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc rep_good
nopl pni monitor vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 popcnt rng rng_en ace ace_en
ace2 phe phe_en pmm pmm_en lahf_lm ida
> bogomips	: 2801.77
> clflush size	: 64
> cache_alignment	: 128
> address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
> power management:
>
>
> and "xl info":
>
> host                   : helium
> release                : 3.3.6-1-ARCH
> version                : #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun May 13 10:52:32 CEST 2012
> machine                : x86_64
> nr_cpus                : 2
> nr_nodes               : 1
> cores_per_socket       : 1
> threads_per_core       : 1
> cpu_mhz                : 1400
> hw_caps                :
bfc9fbff:20100800:00000000:00000000:008863a9:00000000:00000001:00000000
> virt_caps              :
> total_memory           : 7423
> free_memory            : 6315
> free_cpus              : 0
> xen_major              : 4
> xen_minor              : 1
> xen_extra              : .2
> xen_caps               : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p 
> xen_scheduler          : credit
> xen_pagesize           : 4096
> platform_params        : virt_start=0xffff800000000000
> xen_changeset          : unavailable
> xen_commandline        : dom0_mem=max:1G loglvl=all guest_loglvl=all
com1=115200,8n1 console=com1
> cc_compiler            : gcc version 4.7.0 20120414 (prerelease) (GCC) 
> cc_compile_by          : sam
> cc_compile_domain      : localdomain
> cc_compile_date        : Wed May  2 19:51:21 PDT 2012
> xend_config_format     : 4
>
>
>
> and Xen''s dmesg:
>
>  __  __            _  _    _   ____  
>  \ \/ /___ _ __   | || |  / | |___ \ 
>   \  // _ \ ''_ \  | || |_ | |   __) |
>   /  \  __/ | | | |__   _|| |_ / __/ 
>  /_/\_\___|_| |_|    |_|(_)_(_)_____|
>                                      
> (XEN) Xen version 4.1.2 (sam@localdomain) (gcc version 4.7.0 20120414
(prerelease) (GCC) ) Wed May  2 19:51:21 PDT 2012
> (XEN) Latest ChangeSet: unavailable
> (XEN) Bootloader: GNU GRUB 0.97
> (XEN) Command line: dom0_mem=max:1G loglvl=all guest_loglvl=all
com1=115200,8n1 console=com1
> (XEN) Video information:
> (XEN)  VGA is text mode 80x25, font 8x16
> (XEN)  VBE/DDC methods: V2; EDID transfer time: 1 seconds
> (XEN) Disc information:
> (XEN)  Found 1 MBR signatures
> (XEN)  Found 1 EDD information structures
> (XEN) Xen-e820 RAM map:
> (XEN)  0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
> (XEN)  000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  0000000000100000 - 00000000cffb0000 (usable)
> (XEN)  00000000cffb0000 - 00000000cffbe000 (ACPI data)
> (XEN)  00000000cffbe000 - 00000000cfff0000 (ACPI NVS)
> (XEN)  00000000cfff0000 - 00000000d0000000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  00000000fecc0000 - 00000000fecc1000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  00000000fff00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
> (XEN)  0000000100000000 - 0000000200000000 (usable)
> (XEN) ACPI: RSDP 000F9EB0, 0024 (r2 ACPIAM)
> (XEN) ACPI: XSDT CFFB0100, 0054 (r1 091911 XSDT1512 20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: FACP CFFB0290, 00F4 (r4 091911 FACP1512 20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: DSDT CFFB0450, 43EC (r2  1AOOW 1AOOW013       13 INTL 20051117)
> (XEN) ACPI: FACS CFFBE000, 0040
> (XEN) ACPI: APIC CFFB0390, 0072 (r2 091911 APIC1512 20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: MCFG CFFB0410, 003C (r1 091911 OEMMCFG  20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: OEMB CFFBE040, 0082 (r1 091911 OEMB1512 20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: HPET CFFBA450, 0038 (r1 091911 VIA HPET 20110919 MSFT       97)
> (XEN) ACPI: SSDT CFFBE0D0, 0711 (r1    AMI   P001PM        1 INTL 20051117)
> (XEN) System RAM: 7423MB (7601468kB)
> (XEN) No NUMA configuration found
> (XEN) Faking a node at 0000000000000000-0000000200000000
> (XEN) Domain heap initialised
> (XEN) CPU: Vendor unknown, using generic init.
> (XEN) CPU: Your system may be unstable.
Unknown CPU
> (XEN) found SMP MP-table at 000ff780
> (XEN) DMI present.
> (XEN) Using APIC driver default
> (XEN) ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x808
> (XEN) ACPI: ACPI SLEEP INFO: pm1x_cnt[804,0], pm1x_evt[800,0]
> (XEN) ACPI:                  wakeup_vec[cffbe00c], vec_size[20]
> (XEN) ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
> (XEN) ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
> (XEN) Processor #0 6:15 APIC version 20
> (XEN) ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x02] lapic_id[0x02] enabled)
> (XEN) Processor #2 6:15 APIC version 20
> (XEN) ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x03] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
> (XEN) IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 3, version 3, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23
> (XEN) ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x04] address[0xfecc0000] gsi_base[24])
> (XEN) IOAPIC[1]: apic_id 4, version 3, address 0xfecc0000, GSI 24-47
> (XEN) ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl)
> (XEN) ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 9 low level)
> (XEN) ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 10 global_irq 10 low level)
> (XEN) ACPI: IRQ0 used by override.
> (XEN) ACPI: IRQ2 used by override.
> (XEN) ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
> (XEN) ACPI: IRQ10 used by override.
> (XEN) Enabling APIC mode:  Flat.  Using 2 I/O APICs
> (XEN) ACPI: HPET id: 0x11068201 base: 0xfed00000
> (XEN) PCI: MCFG configuration 0: base e0000000 segment 0 buses 0 - 255
> (XEN) PCI: Not using MMCONFIG.
> (XEN) Table is not found!
> (XEN) Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
> (XEN) IRQ limits: 48 GSI, 352 MSI/MSI-X
> (XEN) Using scheduler: SMP Credit Scheduler (credit)
> (XEN) Detected 1400.060 MHz processor.
> (XEN) Initing memory sharing.
> (XEN) No machine check initialization
> (XEN) I/O virtualisation disabled
No IOMMU
> (XEN) ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
> (XEN)  -> Using new ACK method
> (XEN) ..TIMER: vector=0xF0 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
> (XEN) Platform timer is 14.318MHz HPET
> (XEN) Allocated console ring of 16 KiB.
> (XEN) Brought up 2 CPUs
> (XEN) HPET: 3 timers in total, 0 timers will be used for broadcast
> (XEN) ACPI sleep modes: S3
> (XEN) xenoprof: Initialization failed. Unsupported processor. Unknown
vendor 255
> (XEN) *** LOADING DOMAIN 0 ***
> (XEN)  Xen  kernel: 64-bit, lsb, compat32
> (XEN)  Dom0 kernel: 64-bit, PAE, lsb, paddr 0x1000000 -> 0x1eb8000
> (XEN) PHYSICAL MEMORY ARRANGEMENT:
> (XEN)  Dom0 alloc.:   00000001f4000000->00000001f8000000 (243243 pages
to be allocated)
> (XEN)  Init. ramdisk: 00000001ff62b000->00000001fffff800
> (XEN) VIRTUAL MEMORY ARRANGEMENT:
> (XEN)  Loaded kernel: ffffffff81000000->ffffffff81eb8000
> (XEN)  Init. ramdisk: ffffffff81eb8000->ffffffff8288c800
> (XEN)  Phys-Mach map: ffffffff8288d000->ffffffff82a8d000
> (XEN)  Start info:    ffffffff82a8d000->ffffffff82a8d4b4
> (XEN)  Page tables:   ffffffff82a8e000->ffffffff82aa7000
> (XEN)  Boot stack:    ffffffff82aa7000->ffffffff82aa8000
> (XEN)  TOTAL:         ffffffff80000000->ffffffff82c00000
> (XEN)  ENTRY ADDRESS: ffffffff818b4200
> (XEN) Dom0 has maximum 2 VCPUs
> (XEN) Scrubbing Free RAM:
...............................................................done.
> (XEN) Xen trace buffers: disabled
> (XEN) Std. Loglevel: All
> (XEN) Guest Loglevel: All
> (XEN) *** Serial input -> DOM0 (type ''CTRL-a'' three
times to switch input to Xen)
> (XEN) Freed 228kB init memory.
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.1
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.2
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.3
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.4
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.5
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.6
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:00.7
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:01.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:01.1
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:03.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:03.1
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:03.2
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:03.3
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:03.4
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:0f.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:10.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:10.1
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:10.2
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:10.3
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:10.4
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:11.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:11.7
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:13.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 00:14.0
> (XEN) PCI add device 05:00.0
> (XEN) physdev.c:155: dom0: wrong map_pirq type 3
>
>
I suspect that something is bailing rather early because the CPU is
unrecognized, resulting in no HVM support being found.

But as Jan said, there is fairly little we can do at this point about it.

~Andrew
>
> -Sam
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-users
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
-- 
Andrew Cooper - Dom0 Kernel Engineer, Citrix XenServer
T: +44 (0)1223 225 900, http://www.citrix.com

>>> On 23.05.12 at 10:46, "Jan Beulich"
<JBeulich@suse.com> wrote:
>>>> On 19.05.12 at 22:00, Sam Mulvey
<sam@tacomatelematics.com> wrote:
>> Recently got a Via VE-900 board.   It has a via nano x2 chip on it, and
>> suggests that it has Intel-compatible virtualization extensions.   Has
anyone
> 
>> worked with this board yet?   I thought it would be nice to have a 
>> lower-powered, nearly silent Xen machine sitting on my desk.
> 
> Looking around a little on their website, they don''t seem to
> publish proper specifications. Without that, and neither having
> access to a respective system to actually test eventual changes,
> it would be rather presumptuous to try to extend Xen to support
> this. (As a side note, we''re in feature freeze right now anyway,
> so this could only be done for 4.3 anyway.)
> 
> I submitted a request for access to full documentation to them,
> but based on past experience I''m not having much hope that any
> response will show up (not to speak of a positive one).
They responded quite quickly, but won''t get full information out
without requiring an NDA for the moment (but they indicated to
work on lifting that restriction).
>> I''ve got it booting into Xen 4.1.2 and running PV
dom0''s, but I''m not able
>> to load any HVM domains.    I posted this question first on Xen-users,
and I
>> was asked if I was able to get KVM or VirtualBox working--
I''ve tried KVM and
>> managed to get it booting into a Linux livecd and a Windows installer.
> 
> That can likely be taken as confirmation of above statement about
> being (reasonably) compatible with an already existing HVM
> implementation.
They did confirm that part, by quoting the relevant pieces from
their doc. This together with the Linux bits to enable 64-bit
support on those CPUs result in the attached patch (on top of
current -unstable, and requiring to either drop the hunk changing
xen/arch/x86/hvm/nestedhvm.c, or to apply the patch at
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-05/msg01830.html
upfront. Would you be willing/able to give this a try?

Jan



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On May 24, 2012, at 5:24 AM, Jan Beulich wrote:
> 
> They did confirm that part, by quoting the relevant pieces from
> their doc. This together with the Linux bits to enable 64-bit
> support on those CPUs result in the attached patch (on top of
> current -unstable, and requiring to either drop the hunk changing
> xen/arch/x86/hvm/nestedhvm.c, or to apply the patch at
> http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-05/msg01830.html
> upfront. Would you be willing/able to give this a try?
> 
> Jan
> 
> <x86-centaur-64bit-hvm.patch>


Sure!   The board itself isn''t doing much right now, and I could put it
on the network if it comes to that.

I''ll start in on it tonight.

 -Sam





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