[Qemu-discuss] qemu with vfio and graphics cards

[John Hodrien]

I've got a graphics card I want to pass through to a VM (whether by vfio or
some other mechanism, I really don't mind).  I'm currently testing with an
nVidia Quadro FX 580, but it's not working, and I'd love a pointer.

I was trying with vfio, thinking this is the best option.  I'd set the kernel
opts I believed to be required:

intel_iommu=on pci-stub.ids=10de:0659 vfio_iommu_type1.allow_unsafe_interrupts=1

I do the vfio-bind twiddle.

I run qemu without kvm, and it works, which makes me think I've done the vfio
bit right.

/usr/local/qemu-2.2.1/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -M q35 -device
ioh3420,bus=pcie.0,addr=1c.0,multifunction=on,port=1,chassis=1,id=root.1
-device vfio-pci,host=082:00.0,bus=root.1,addr=00.0,multifunction=on
/data/image -m 4096

I run the same with kvm enabled, and the nvidia driver fails to load.

/usr/local/qemu-2.2.1/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -M q35 -device
ioh3420,bus=pcie.0,addr=1c.0,multifunction=on,port=1,chassis=1,id=root.1
-device vfio-pci,host=082:00.0,bus=root.1,addr=00.0,multifunction=on
/data/image -m 4096 -enable-kvm -cpu host,hv-time,kvm=off

dmesg simply says:
nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 26 for MSI/MSI-X
NVRM: RmInitAdapater failed! (0x23:0x2f:567)
NVRM: rm_init_adapter failed for device bearing minor number 0
NVRM: nvidia_frontend_open: minor 0, module->open() failed, error -5

Am I right in thinking this means the vfio side is right?  Does the fact it
works with qemu mean the graphics card is suitable for this, or could the
issue be the card I'm using?

Thanks,

jh