Gpu passthrough vfio blue screen

Hi,
I’m not entirely sure whether this belongs into the “Windows” or “Linux” category.

I followed wendell’s guide on how to setup gpu passthrough ( https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ubuntu-17-04-vfio-pcie-passthrough-kernel-update-4-14-rc1/119639 ).

I’m using Ubuntu 18.04 and I’m passing a HD7950 through to a VM.
The problem is that the Windows 10 guest blue screens as soon as I boot from the .iso (1803) file to install Windows.
First the machine is about 2 minutes in the “TianoCore” screen (the VM has 4GB of ram if that matters). After that it starts loading the iso and the Windows boot animation starts. About 2 seconds later it blue screen’s with the error “IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL”.

The libvirt log from the vm:
https://pastebin.com/vUzfif9J

“virsh edit win10”:
https://pastebin.com/ABVP1PJH

I had it working before but I don’t know what changed.

Any help is appreciated :slight_smile:

Windows 10 1803 has had some issues in KVM, especially on amd cpus.
This thread might help-

It’s main suggestions are not to use host-passthrough on the CPU and to use options kvm ignore_msrs=1 in modprobe.d

1 Like

Thank you for your answer and for the summary on what to do. It’s working now. I’m using 1709 now, set CPU to “Hypervisor-Standard” and set “options kvm ignore_msrs=1”.

Do you possibly know why the machine is so long on the “TianoCore” screen? Is it testing the memory or something?

It think it does, and the host needs to allocate the memory. I have noticed some excessive boot times on my VMs, and am unsure of why.

This reddit thread suggests static huge pages, the downside of those is the memory is tie up.