topic Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

ironm — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:39:48 GMT

Hello,

Does HP DL385 g7 BIOS support IOMMU for xen virtualization?

There is no option in BIOS to activate it. Maybe I need a special BIOS version?

What I see in xen enabled kernels dmesg is like:

# --

root@xen:/xendomains# grep -i iommu dmesg-DL385g7-kernel*
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel2.6.38-7.txt:[    0.000000] Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel2.6.38-7.txt:[    2.065763] PCI-DMA: using GART IOMMU.
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel2.6.38-7.txt:[    2.065778] PCI-DMA: Reserving 64MB of IOMMU area in the AGP aperture
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel3.txt:[    0.000000] Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel3.txt:[    6.722631] PCI-DMA: using GART IOMMU.
dmesg-DL385g7-kernel3.txt:[    6.722651] PCI-DMA: Reserving 64MB of IOMMU area in the AGP aperture
# ---

Thank you in advance for any hints.

Regards,

Mark

ps. I have planned to order three further DL385 g7 servers depends on this IOMMU feature for HVMs

Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

ironm — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:42:04 GMT

just dmesg for kernel 3.0

Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

ironm — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:42:09 GMT

some more details:

when I try to boot "Linux xen 2.6.32-5-xen-amd64" kernel on HP DL385 g7 with iommu=force option I am getting Panic on CPU 0 and the sytem reboots - see message (on the console) below:

# ---

(XEN) HVM: ASIDs enabled
(XEN) HVM: SVM enabled
(XEN) HVM: Hardware Assited Paging detected
(XEN) AMD-Vi: IOMMU not found!
(XEN)
(XEN) ****************************************
(XEN) Panic on CPU 0:
(XEN) IOMMU setup failed. crash Xen for security purpose!
(XEN) ****************************************
(XEN)
(XEN) Reboot in five seconds...
# ---

The boot entries of my syslinux loader look like:

# ---

label xen40liveHiddenPCI
        menu label xen40liveHiddenPCI
        kernel /live/mboot.c32
        append /live/xen_40_amd64.gz dom0_mem=2048M iommu=force --- /live/vmlinuz console=tty0 ro boot=live config locales=de_DE.UTF-8 utc=no timezone=Europe/Zurich keyboard-layouts=de username=ironm hostname=xen quiet xen-pciback.hide=(05:00.0)(05:00.1) --- /live/initrd.img
# ---

Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

Sirajul haque — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:21:11 GMT

Seems like the option is missing in DL385 G7 and DL585 G7. May be need a BIOS update

Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

Mc20piece — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:58:01 GMT

Has anyone heard anything on this? I have the latest BIOS for the 385 G7 (A18 3/19/2012) and its still not there. This is a huge issue to be honest. If I am missing something please let me know.

Re: IOMMU support in BIOS of HP DL385 g7 servers

Gonzaord — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 14:28:42 GMT

Thi option is only avalaible on some GEN8 Servers with AMd processors.
See http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00191707/c00191707.pdf on page 38.