***GUIDE*** Passing Through Network Controllers to unRAID 6 Virtual Machines


jonp

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Just used this to finally setup my dual port NIC in Sophos UTM firewall.  Took me a bit of searching, but remember that some images/isos/vms won't support memory ballooning, so you won't be able to have different initial/max memory settings (they'll need to be the same value).

 

This is correct.  For Windows, the VirtIO memory balloon driver can be added, but note that if you are passing through a PCI device, you will not be able to take advantage of it (a limitation of PCI device assignment using VFIO, but one that is well worth it).  For non-Windows based guests, if they do not have the Linux virtio memory balloon driver as a part of their kernel, you won't be able to use it either.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had some questions about this guide.

 

In the guide, there is a step about adding a line:

 

pci-stub.ids=8086:153b

 

to the syslinux.cfg

 

I assume this line is "black listing" the device from unraid/hypervisor to make sure it is available to VMs.

 

Edit: I saw in another post another user had this question as well. This guide is about network controllers which are sort of special compared to many devices in that unraid will grab them. Thus this command is needed to explicitly prevent that from happening. I suppose you might want it for SATA controllers...USB controllers? as well. But things like video and sound cards it should not be needed since unraid never tries to control them in the first place.

 

Is this necessary? I've read other guides:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38259.msg368555#msg368555

CHBMB that seem to suggest nothing being added to the syslinux.cfg or go file (where is the go file located btw) and it worked just editing the XML.

 

I have devices that have "dependent" devices, like PCI devices behind a bridge or PCI-e cards that actually are PCI devices attached behind a bridge chip on board. Do I simply have to add all these devices to the XML together or does this complicate matters?

 

Related question, when logged in with PuTTy to the server can you edit the syslinux.cfg or other files directly on the flash drive safely? What command should I use to do that. I apologize I am a linux noob.

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  • 2 months later...

is it possible to set 2 different nics to 2 vms, if yes, how should I change the syslinux.cfg file?

 

It is possible, although I haven't tried....

 

Here's the relevant bit of my syslinux.cfg (I'm passing through a dual-NIC and a USB bus) obviously you'll need to find your own values.

 

append pci-stub.ids=8086:105e,8086:1e26 initrd=/bzroot

 

I'm not sure whether I could pass each port from the dual-NIC to different VMs, but from reading your post that doesn't sound like what you're planning.

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It is possible, although I haven't tried....

 

Here's the relevant bit of my syslinux.cfg (I'm passing through a dual-NIC and a USB bus) obviously you'll need to find your own values.

 

append pci-stub.ids=8086:105e,8086:1e26 initrd=/bzroot

 

I'm not sure whether I could pass each port from the dual-NIC to different VMs, but from reading your post that doesn't sound like what you're planning.

 

How about setting one of them to the vms and the other one to the unraid server, because I got the "one or more network protocols are missing" error on either one of the vms when I only use eth0. If I assign eth1 to vm1, the error appears on vm2, vice versa.

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It is possible, although I haven't tried....

 

Here's the relevant bit of my syslinux.cfg (I'm passing through a dual-NIC and a USB bus) obviously you'll need to find your own values.

 

append pci-stub.ids=8086:105e,8086:1e26 initrd=/bzroot

 

I'm not sure whether I could pass each port from the dual-NIC to different VMs, but from reading your post that doesn't sound like what you're planning.

 

How about setting one of them to the vms and the other one to the unraid server, because I got the "one or more network protocols are missing" error on either one of the vms when I only use eth0. If I assign eth1 to vm1, the error appears on vm2, vice versa.

 

The syslinux bit essentially removes the NICs from Unraid to be used solely by VMs... I'm quite confused now.

 

I thought you had two different NICs and you wanted to passthrough one to one VM and the other to another VM....

 

I think if you posted a bit more info on your config it might help clear things up and exact details of your hardware..

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It is possible, although I haven't tried....

 

Here's the relevant bit of my syslinux.cfg (I'm passing through a dual-NIC and a USB bus) obviously you'll need to find your own values.

 

append pci-stub.ids=8086:105e,8086:1e26 initrd=/bzroot

 

I'm not sure whether I could pass each port from the dual-NIC to different VMs, but from reading your post that doesn't sound like what you're planning.

 

How about setting one of them to the vms and the other one to the unraid server, because I got the "one or more network protocols are missing" error on either one of the vms when I only use eth0. If I assign eth1 to vm1, the error appears on vm2, vice versa.

 

The syslinux bit essentially removes the NICs from Unraid to be used solely by VMs... I'm quite confused now.

 

I thought you had two different NICs and you wanted to passthrough one to one VM and the other to another VM....

 

I think if you posted a bit more info on your config it might help clear things up and exact details of your hardware..

 

Sorry for the confusion, my motherboard is ASUS Z97 Sabertooth Mark S (which have two lan ports, does this count as two nics or one? one of them is realtek and the other one is intel)

 

Could I assign the realtek one to vm1, and intel one to vm2? Or do I need another one for the unraid server itself?

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