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VGABIOS for ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 needed (Virtualization)

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  • VGABIOS for ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 needed (Virtualization)

    Hello,

    I have an ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 (as the title suggests).
    I recently got GPU passthrough working (via. PCI-Passthrough) from a GNU/Linux host to a GNU/Linux Guest (using KVM).

    In the Guest, the FOSS Radeon Drivers work great, however, the fglrx Driver complains about a "Invalid BIOS Signature".

    For me to be able to get the fglrx Drivers (and also the AMD Drivers on Windows) working I need to acquire my VGABIOS...

    I thought this would be a piece of Cake (my bad...).

    As I have a Laptop, I can't set my GPU as a "Secondary" Device and therefore I can't get my VGABIOS pre-POST (important!).
    The reason I need to get a pre-POST VGABIOS is because (I have read) the AMD VGABIOS' modify themselves, therefore it is pointless to get the VGABIOS from my Memory.

    I have already tried using the VGABIOS from my Memory, without success (Guest seems to hang/freeze).
    I have also tried using the VGABIOS' from similar models, without luck.

    I have tried some tools to get my VGABIOS, some of them are:
    - flashrom (DOS and GNU/Linux)
    - atiflash (DOS)
    - atiwinflash (Win NT)
    - GPU-z (Win NT)
    - ... and other tools I probably forgot.

    ... but as they seem to get the VGABIOS from my Memory, and some of them aren't able to extract, the battle seems futile.

    I was talking to someone on the kvm irc on freenode, who said, that he only knows of a single Person who got fglrx working (in a Guest), and that he was an AMD employee who had access to the VGABIOS'.

    Right now it seems impossible for me to acquire my VGABIOS, as the only Options seem like:
    1.) Hope for a miracle.
    2.) Ask AMD for my VGABIOS (I doubt that would work..... still worth a try, maybe?).
    3.) Hope someone here knows something that could help.

    ... any suggestions?
    Last edited by bug!; 27 June 2012, 10:57 AM. Reason: typo, additinal info

  • #2
    Originally posted by bug! View Post
    Hello,

    I have an ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 (as the title suggests).
    I recently got GPU passthrough working (via. PCI-Passthrough) from a GNU/Linux host to a GNU/Linux Guest (using KVM).

    In the Guest, the FOSS Radeon Drivers work great, however, the fglrx Driver complains about a "Invalid BIOS Signature".

    For me to be able to get the fglrx Drivers (and also the AMD Drivers on Windows) working I need to acquire my VGABIOS...

    I thought this would be a piece of Cake (my bad...).

    As I have a Laptop, I can't set my GPU as a "Secondary" Device and therefore I can't get my VGABIOS pre-POST (important!).
    The reason I need to get a pre-POST VGABIOS is because (I have read) the AMD VGABIOS' modify themselves, therefore it is pointless to get the VGABIOS from my Memory.

    I have already tried using the VGABIOS from my Memory, without success (Guest seems to hang/freeze).
    I have also tried using the VGABIOS' from similar models, without luck.

    I have tried some tools to get my VGABIOS, some of them are:
    - flashrom (DOS and GNU/Linux)
    - atiflash (DOS)
    - atiwinflash (Win NT)
    - GPU-z (Win NT)
    - ... and other tools I probably forgot.

    ... but as they seem to get the VGABIOS from my Memory, and some of them aren't able to extract, the battle seems futile.

    I was talking to someone on the kvm irc on freenode, who said, that he only knows of a single Person who got fglrx working (in a Guest), and that he was an AMD employee who had access to the VGABIOS'.
    I seriously doubt that vgabios is required. Most likely there is a bug within the fglrx driver that needs fixing.

    Originally posted by bug! View Post
    Right now it seems impossible for me to acquire my VGABIOS, as the only Options seem like:
    1.) Hope for a miracle.
    2.) Ask AMD for my VGABIOS (I doubt that would work..... still worth a try, maybe?).
    3.) Hope someone here knows something that could help.

    ... any suggestions?
    I suggest posting a bug report on the "unofficial AMD Linux bugzilla", and provide the information required to at least get the open source driver working.


    Also, What is the laptop model? I did not see any information on that.

    Comment


    • #3
      Hey, thanks for your post.

      My Laptop is a Dell Studio 1558, they come with slight modifications.
      Mine has an intel i7 Q720 which has VT-d and VT-x support. ( http://ark.intel.com/products/43122 )
      The Graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470.

      I have flashed my locked Phoenix BIOS with a mod to show hidden options like VT-d etc., so I could enable them, as they were disabled by default.

      ... and as I successfully got the FOSS Radeon working in a VM (near native performance), I am 100% sure my Hardware supports it .

      I am surprised that my Dell Laptop from 2010 supports such advanced features, as it doesn't only depend on the CPU & Chipset, but also the Motherboard.

      According to the Xorg.0.log, the fglrx driver checks the vgabios rom for some kind of signature, and as I have a Cirrus side-by-side in the VM, it checks the Cirrus' vgabios.

      I have also tried removing the Cirrus card from the VM, and passing my Graphics card with it's vgabios (which I got from RAM), but either way the VM seems to hang/freeze.

      I have also read that the fglrx driver may depend on infomation that is in the vgabios (other than the signature).

      I'll post a bug report to the unofficial AMD linux bugzilla, and I'll link to it here once I'm done writing it.

      Thank you for your time.
      Last edited by bug!; 02 July 2012, 02:54 PM. Reason: additional info

      Comment


      • #4
        You should use Linux on real hardware in order to install fglrx. Otherwise it is pointless...

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Kano View Post
          You should use Linux on real hardware in order to install fglrx. Otherwise it is pointless...
          That is the point, I passed through my Graphics card to the Virtual Machine, it is real hardware...
          FOSS Radeon works perfectly, fglrx does not (probably due to artificial limitations... like vgabios signature checks).

          Last edited by bug!; 02 July 2012, 03:57 PM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Whats wrong when you read the vga bios from memory? Thats the usual way you would do that when you want to use some gfx cards on mac using direct efi boot instead of the csm.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by bug! View Post
              As I have a Laptop, I can't set my GPU as a "Secondary" Device and therefore I can't get my VGABIOS pre-POST (important!).
              The reason I need to get a pre-POST VGABIOS is because (I have read) the AMD VGABIOS' modify themselves, therefore it is pointless to get the VGABIOS from my Memory.
              ...
              I have also tried using the VGABIOS' from similar models, without luck.
              In other words, the VGABIOS from memory is modified, as the AMD VGABIOS' apparently modify themselves at the POST.

              Comment


              • #8
                So, I have finished writing the bug report.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Bump.

                  The VGABIOS that I got from my memory seems to be correct, because newer version of qemu/kvm don't crash the VM, so it must have been a regression/bug.

                  I have also tried coreboot with my VGABIOS built into it, and using it in the VM.
                  However, fglrx still says "Invalid BIOS Signature".

                  Other than that, I haven't really gotten any further.

                  PS0:
                  The performance of the radeon driver inside a VM is really amazing.
                  PS1:
                  The CPU performance is also amazing.
                  In the bug report I have written:
                  I have even played Nexuiz inside the Virtual Machine, with GPU performance near
                  native.
                  Only the cpus are having trouble, but that's another story.
                  Which was my fault for manually setting the CPU topology.
                  Set the virtual CPU's to the amount of logical cores your hosts CPU has, forget about the topology.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by bug! View Post
                    Bump.
                    The VGABIOS that I got from my memory seems to be correct, because newer version of qemu/kvm don't crash the VM, so it must have been a regression/bug.
                    How did you get the bios from the memory? Which tool did you used.
                    I tried to the vbios from my card and it did't work.

                    Comment

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