IOMMU Disbaled on HP xw4600 Workstation

[naturalblue]

Hi

Firstly, apologies if this has been raised before.

 

I have a HP xw4600 workstation PC and am trying to get iommu working.

The bios has VT-x and VT-d enabled as shown in the photos.

In PCI setting it shows 1 of the cards coming up as disabled but it is showing in the logs on unraid.

Has anyone any idea, I have attached logs from my system.

My BIOS is the latest: 01.34 Rev A.

 

ARK says my chip supports both vt-x and vt-d: http://ark.intel.com/products/33922/Intel-Core2-Quad-Processor-Q9300-6M-Cache-2_50-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB

 

The 2 graphics cards are : AMD/ATI R7 260X and ATI HD5450.

 

I have also tried passing this in the sysconfig.cfg file

vfio_iommu_type1.allow_unsafe_interrupts=1 initrd=/bzroot

On bootup I get failed

Apr 7 09:12:18 Tower kernel: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 0 at drivers/iommu/dmar.c:844 warn_invalid_dmar+0x70/0x7d Apr 7 09:12:18 Tower kernel: Your BIOS is broken; DMAR reported at address fed90000 returns all ones!

 

If anyone can help I'd appreciate it. If anymore info is needed please let me know.

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20170407-0822.zip

unRaid Hardware Profile.txt

unRaid Syslog.txt

unRaid System Devices.txt

Edited April 7, 2017 by naturalblue

[tjb_altf4]

I get a similar warning but IOMMU still works and is active.
In unRaid web console, Under Tools > System Profiler > System Overview section, does IOMMU say its Disabled or Enabled ?

[naturalblue]

It says it is disabled in system overview. Are you using a hp xw4600 workstation as well?

[SpaceInvaderOne]

 

Hi, @naturalblue I don't know a lot about your problem but I think this is common for HP xw4600 Workstations. The BIOS how its handling IOMMU hardware is incorrect.
This same error was seen a lot of systems (not only xw4600) running  32-bit Linux versions and actually could stop some systems being able to boot. The workaround was to add
iommu=soft to the syslinux config.
This enables swiotlb which is a software implementation of the translation function of an IOMMU. Also known as “bounce buffers”. Switlb as far as I know doesnt do isolation so wouldnt be good to use for your problem. It basically is a substitute for the hardware iommu.
 

I would be looking for an updated bios in which iommu is handled correctly.Even try reflashing the existing bios that your board has if no newer version available.You may even find trying an older bios worth a try. I had an old ASRock motherboard once and the newest 2 bioses had broken the vt-d and I could only use an older bios for it to work. I think sometimes vendors update a bios to fix one thing and break something else sometimes??? 

Sorry, i cant be of more help. Maybe email Limetech support for some help. 

 

edit........ You would be better posting this in the vm section rather than general support. More people there will read it who may be able to help.

Edited April 10, 2017 by gridrunner

[naturalblue]

47 minutes ago, gridrunner said:

 

Hi, @naturalblue I don't know a lot about your problem but I think this is common for HP xw4600 Workstations. The BIOS how its handling IOMMU hardware is incorrect.
This same error was seen a lot of systems (not only xw4600) running  32-bit Linux versions and actually could stop some systems being able to boot. The workaround was to add
iommu=soft to the syslinux config.
This enables swiotlb which is a software implementation of the translation function of an IOMMU. Also known as “bounce buffers”. Switlb as far as I know doesnt do isolation so wouldnt be good to use for your problem. It basically is a substitute for the hardware iommu.
 

I would be looking for an updated bios in which iommu is handled correctly.Even try reflashing the existing bios that your board has if no newer version available.You may even find trying an older bios worth a try. I had an old ASRock motherboard once and the newest 2 bioses had broken the vt-d and I could only use an older bios for it to work. I think sometimes vendors update a bios to fix one thing and break something else sometimes??? 

Sorry, i cant be of more help. Maybe email Limetech support for some help. 

 

edit........ You would be better posting this in the vm section rather than general support. More people there will read it who may be able to help.

Thanks for the help. I will port in VMs and see if it helps.

Regards

[naturalblue]

Hi

I was given a Thinkstation S20 and placed my drives and USB key in it. Was able to get VM passthrough working almost straight away. Seems HP Xw4600 is a no go because of the BIOS.

Thanks for the help