Il 11/06/2015 12:28, Fabio Fantoni ha scritto:
Il 11/06/2015 12:06, Zir Blazer ha scritto:
Since I'm not a developer I may be peeking my nose a bit too far, but
based on what I know, I think that enabling AHCI by default would be
a compatibility suicide. I'm not sure about Linux and Windows
Vista/7/8+, but at least for Windows XP based VMs, it would be a
terrible idea.
Also use windows xp without security updates (support ended one year
ago) is a "suicide".
I already did this patch considering windows domU problems (I'm using
mainly them for now), ahci used with option (ahci=0|1) instead replace
and default is disabled.
I tried it with different windows (excluding xp...abandoned)
I also tried with new winpv drivers
(http://www.xenproject.org/developers/teams/windows-pv-drivers.html)
With this patch applied ahci will be not used and will be used only
setting ahci=1, is it a good idea or is there problem also in this case?
I did many other tests in different linux hvm domUs (fedora and ubuntu)
and windows (7, 8.1, 10) without found problems.
Is this patch acceptable for xen 4.6?
Thanks for any reply and sorry for my bad english.
Back during WXP years, the vanilla install ISO didn't had any AHCI
Drivers integrated at all. If you set the SATA Controller to AHCI,
the WXP installation wouldn't detect any Hard Disk at all. If you
really wanted to use AHCI during its early days, you would need a
Floppy Disk with the AHCI Drivers of your SATA Controller
(Chipset/South Bridge or third party controller), that you could use
by pressing the F6 key right after booting the install CD:
http://www.pc-tips-and-tricks.com/images/Install-windows-xp-02.jpg
If you didn't had a Floppy Disk Driver or were lazy, the typical
choice was to set the SATA Controller to IDE and install WXP,
skipping anything AHCI related.
At some point an application called nLite appeared, which allowed you
to make your custom Windows XP ISO. You could easily modify a lot of
default options, integrate hotfixes, and even Drivers, and after you
were happy with your changes, you could then make your custom ISO and
burn it to a CD (Or from a USB Flash Drive with other tools to make
it booteable). So, with nLite, it was rather easy to integrated the
AHCI Drivers of your SATA Controller to the install ISO. This way, if
you were doing a fresh install, reinstall or repair, there was no
excuse to not use AHCI.
However, since for VM usage AHCI was not available at all until QEMU
implemented it recently, by default you will be always using IDE, so
there was no actual need to make a customized WXP install ISO with
AHCI Drivers that you were never going to use. Besides, Windows XP
doesn't even install nor have ready any AHCI Drivers if you're in IDE
mode, so if you're going to switch to use AHCI by default, every
existing WXP VM would greet you with a BSOD after upgrading Xen.
So, with this proposal you would have two issues: First, doing a new
install of Windows XP on a VM , since by default it shouldn't detect
any HD at all in AHCI. Second, that existing WXP VMs will BSOD on
boot. For as long as you can switch to IDE mode everything should
still be working as always, but it would mean that at the very least
you would have to modify the DomU config file to replace default AHCI
with old IDE.
Regarding using Windows XP with AHCI:
First, as stated before, if you want to install it on a new VM, you
need the AHCI Drivers. Since it seems that at some point support for
Floppy Disk got removed from Xen (I tried recently to use a Floppy
Disk image with fda= as stated somewhere on the wiki, but it did
nothing. Nor I found any recent documentation claiming that you can
mount a Floppy Disk image at all), the only choice is to make a
custom ISO with nLite with the AHCI Drivers integrated in it. Since
the emulated Southbridge is an Intel ICH9, I believe that the Drivers
that should be needed are these:
http://www.win-raid.com/t22f23-Guide-Integration-of-Intels-AHCI-RAID-drivers-into-a-Windows-XP-W-k-W-k-CD.html
Check for the a) and c) options for WXP/2003 in 32 and 64 Bits variants.
Also, it is important to note that the plain ICH9 Southbridge
according to Intel DOES NOT OFFICIALLY HAVE AHCI SUPPORT, ICH9R does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I/O_Controller_Hub#ICH9
The previous Drivers are claimed to have been modified to force
support for ICH9 since AHCI is there, just that the original Drivers
doesn't want to use it. Typical artificial market segmentation
strategies. Still, if QEMU is emulating the plain ICH9 and you can't
get Windows to see drives in AHCI mode after integrating the AHCI
Drivers, that may be why.
Second, it is possible to switch from IDE to AHCI on WXP without
reinstalling, but doing it is rather hacky and instructions are very
Chipset and vendor dependant, which may (Or not) include editing
Windows registry. Here are instructions that claim to work for Intel
Southbridges, which since we're using ICH9, may possibily work for
Xen based WXP VMs:
http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a11/change-from-ide-to-ahci-without-reinstalling-windows-xp.php
But should these not work, chances are that you will need to add a
rescue ISO to your DomU config file to repair the broken install,
since I'm not 100% sure if you can even get it to boot in Safe Mode
if it BSODs at boot.
I think that's all what I could figure out. If you're using the GPLPV
Drivers I don't know if there are any changes regarding running in
AHCI mode.
----------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2015 16:17:39 +0200
From: fabio.fant...@m2r.biz
To: stefano.stabell...@eu.citrix.com
CC: xen-de...@lists.xensource.com; wei.l...@citrix.com;
ian.campb...@citrix.com; ian.jack...@eu.citrix.com;
paul.durr...@citrix.com; anthony.per...@citrix.com
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v2][RFC] libxl: Add AHCI support for
upstream qemu
Il 08/06/2015 16:00, Stefano Stabellini ha scritto:
On Tue, 19 May 2015, Fabio Fantoni wrote:
Il 19/05/2015 12:40, Wei Liu ha scritto:
On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 07:22:01PM +0200, Fabio Fantoni wrote:
Il 18/05/2015 17:53, Wei Liu ha scritto:
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:11:13PM +0200, Fabio Fantoni wrote:
Usage:
ahci=0|1 (default=0)
If enabled adds ich9 disk controller in ahci mode and uses it
with
upstream qemu to emulate disks instead of ide.
Is ICH9 available in our default setup?
Why do we not always enable AHCI?
ahci seems require ich9 controller (default in q35 but not in
older used
by
xen), I think that change it ide->ahci automatically for all
cases may
causes problems, probably in save/restore and more probably in
windows <=7
without pv where change ide<->ahci require a registry change for
not have
blue screen.
I guess we now have a QEMU with Q35. But migrating from previous
previous versions will indeed need to be taken care of.
This patch don't add q35 cipset support but only ich9 ahci disk
controller in
older and only cipset supported in xen.
This is pretty nice actually, thanks for the patch!
Time ago I tried to add q35 support in xen but I had some problems
I was
unable to solves and nobody helped me.
Q35 have newer ich9 ahci disk controller as default, on older
cipset must be
added (done in this patch).
qemu, kvm ovmf already support q35, xen need changes at least in
hvmloader
(that I'm probably unable to do) and libxl (that I started time
ago without
good result), Add ahci support and switch all qemu parameters in
libxl to new
-device is a good start also for future q35 support (are both part
needed
based on my old q35 tests on xen)
Yeah, going q35 opens a whole new can of worms. I think that adding
the
ich9 chipset to the existing machine is a good compromise.
It doesn't support cdroms which still use ide (cdroms will use
"-device
ide-cd" as new qemu parameters)
Ahci requires new qemu parameters but for now other emulated
disks
cases
remains with old ones because automatic bus selection seems
bugged in
qemu using new parameters. (I'll retry)
Buggy as in? Have you reported to QEMU upstream?
Already reported long time ago in xen-devel and qemu-devel, the
only reply
from qemu-devel was to use fixed bus and is what I did in v2 of
this
patch.
Can someone tell me if can be a problem fixed bus?
I don't have enough knowledge on this. Maybe Anthony and Stefano
have
more insight.
Let me get this straight: cdrom still works but goes via ide. In
addition AHCI disks can be attached. Seems good to me.
Have you tested Windows?
If this works with Windows too, I would expose an ahci option
(default=off) in the config file. If ahci=on, then all disks could be
exposed via ahci. Does this seem sensible? In a couple of releases, if
it works well, we could make ahci=on the default.
I tested both linux and windows, mainly windows domUs (7 and 8.1).
Windows < 8 FWIK needs a registry key change for switch ide<->ahci
without bluescreen (this is the reason because I did ahci=0|1 instead
change it by default) but trying with windows 7 with pv is possible
change without bluescreen, probably the problem is only without pv but
ahci option default disabled resolve it (for the users don't set ahci=0
on xen upgrade process).
Based on what I know and all tests I did this patch seems the best way
for add ahci support but I think that a experts (like you) review is
better.
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