Aragorn wrote:

> Okay my fellow penguinistas, now I'm even more confused... As I like to
> be well-prepared, I do a lot of reading beforehand, and I keep the
> pertaining webpages open in a browser on one machine while I'm trying to
> set up the other machine.
>
> [...]
>
> Well, from what it seems now - and correct me if I'm wrong - one may
> indeed succeed in setting up an X11 server inside /domU,/ even with the
> much-desired OpenGL acceleration, but... one cannot actually *view* this
> session from within the /domU/ itself?
>
> So, again, if I'm not mistaken, then one would still need to be running an
> X11 session in /dom0/ or possibly even on another networknode and connect
> to the /domU/ session using /vncviewer/ or some X11 forwarding? Is this
> correct? [...]

Okay guys, after some more careful scrutiny of the plethora of available yet
unclear or ambiguous webpages on the subject, I've come to realize that all
may not be lost. However, it does leave me with a question which I'm
hoping the more experienced among you - hint: Arthur Hagen? :p - could help
me solve. I will get into this question a little further down.

I am however posting my findings here so as to let you know - for those
interested in Xen - that my original plan was not so bad after all. You
see, my original plan invoked two graphics adapters, which are currently
both in that computer and are both hooked up.

One graphics adapter is an Asus GeForce 8800 GTS PCIe card with 640 MB of
memory. The other graphics adapter is a GeCube Radeon 9250 PCI card with
256 MB of memory. When the system boots, it only drives the Radeon PCI
card, apparently because it thinks it's the primary graphics adapter, which
is a bit strange since it's an older PCI card instead of the newer and
fancier PCIe cards like the GeForce card in my system. The Radeon is
hooked up to channel 2 of my primary monitor, while the GeForce is hooked
up to channel 1 on both monitors.

My original plan was to hide the GeForce from Xen in /dom0/ and thus have it
available as "native hardware" in /domU./ Apparently, a bug report on the
Xen Wiki does however state that this is broken in Xen 3.0, but I don't
know what it's status is in Xen 3.1 - Gentoo comes with Xen 3.1.2, albeit
still /~arch/ masked.

So it still remains to be seen whether I will actually be able to hide the
device from Xen and thus run X.Org with the unpatched nVidia driver in
(one) /domU./ I'm keeping my fingers crossed, as the information on the
internet seems so outdated that knowing what to expect is just plain
guesswork.

However, if I can indeed hide the device from the hypervisor and the /dom0/
XenLinux kernel, then it *should* in theory be possible to build the nVidia
driver module - provided that you export a variable called
IGNORE_XEN_PRESENCE with a value different from "0" - prior to building the
kernel module. Reportedly, this works for building and installing the
nVidia driver in /dom0,/ and if I can successfully hide the GeForce
from /dom0,/ then it becomes available as raw hardware to /domU/ and then
it shouldn't be any different there.

However - and this is where I come to my question - as long as I'm not
running X11 in the /domU,/ switching the console over from /dom0/ to /domU/
using the...

xm console

.... command, or alternatively...

xm create <virtual_machine_label> -c

.... then the primary display for character mode consoles will still be the
Radeon, and I believe it would also be very difficult to use a framebuffer
driver in /domU./ So what I would like to do is hide the Radeon
from /dom0/ when *inside* this one particular /domU,/ so that I would
simply always make use of the GeForce in this particular /domU,/ even for
character mode consoles - I'm not a fan of display managers anyway.

However - and herein lies the problem - hiding the Radeon from /dom0/ would
not be a Xen option but a Linux option. So... Does anyone know how to do
that?

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)