GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

[RoboJ1M]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Really?
Thread dead?
No more updates from Gigabyte?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

I've just been waiting for more users to tell me what Gigabyte boards need this added in, then I will send in a list.

So, no it is not dead at all, just seems most users who needed a BIOS have now already got one.

Do you need one? If so for what board?

[RoboJ1M]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

I've just been waiting for more users to tell me what Gigabyte boards need this added in, then I will send in a list.

So, no it is not dead at all, just seems most users who needed a BIOS have now already got one.

Do you need one? If so for what board?

Thanks for getting back to me Lsdmeasap.

Well, none at the moment, I haven't purchased a board yet because all I can gather at the moment is their are beta BIOSes out and none of the current Linux distros boot with them.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I like the Gigabyte board used in my living room PC, so I'm planning on getting the a Gigabyte board. Just don't want to buy something only to find this BIOS doesn't work with Ubuntu.

Do Gigabyte provide any Linux support or will I just be told they only support Windows?

Thanks,

J1M.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Hmm, really? About Linux I mean.

I thought plenty of users here had posted results with Linux, did I read that wrong? Sorry I don't use Linux or know what this feature really is, so I am blind when reading this thread :)

[artdrivers]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

I thought this thread was for a BIOS update for IOMMU ( input/output memory management unit ) support? This is for server like programs mainly used on server motherboards.

IOMMU in relation to virtualization
When an operating system is running inside a virtual machine, including systems that use paravirtualization, such as Xen, it does not usually know the physical addresses of memory that it accesses. This makes providing direct access to the computer hardware difficult, because if the OS tried to instruct the hardware to perform a direct memory access (DMA), it would likely corrupt the memory, as the hardware does not know about the mapping between the virtual and real addresses used by the virtualized guest system. The corruption is avoided because the hypervisor or OS intervenes in the I/O operation to apply the translations; unfortunately, this delays the I/O operation.
An IOMMU can solve this problem by re-mapping the addresses accessed by the hardware according to the same (or a compatible) translation table used by the virtual machine guest.[8]

I don't fear it has anything to do with running UBUNTU OS 'which is mainly for Desktops'. I have installed that in the past on this system without any noticeable hickups. It's when you want to run IOMMU in a virtual environment such as XEN that you may have problems, thus needing a BIOS update. I believe that's what this thread was built for. To my understanding Gigabyte has released a BIOS for the IOMMU switch. At least for the GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD5, which is a desktop motherboard. So they are trying to adapt the server use on desktop motherboards. Due to the ability of the ECC memory function and the new Phenom CPU which supports it. Please anyone correct me if I am wrong. IOMMU is all new to me, but I don't full with servers.

UPDATE correction
I noticed UBUNTU offers a UBUNTU server install as well, so stike that mainly for desktop comment.

[RoboJ1M]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

UPDATE correction
I noticed UBUNTU offers a UBUNTU server install as well, so stike that mainly for desktop comment.

Bingo. I use Ubuntu Server 10.04 on my "Server". And my server, I mean the PC in the study.
I use the vitrualization to create multiple virtual servers on that server, for fun and to learn about server administration (I do some at work).
One of the virtual machines is to run MythTV (I use mythbuntu of course ;) and therein lies the problem, you can't virtualize PCI cards without an IOMMU.
Also the neatness of virtualization appeals to me :)

I shall read the thread again, but I was under the impression that the early Gigabyte BIOS caused other Linux's to not function correctly (black screen, no keyboard, but user could ssh into the machine in one of the earlier posts?)

Regards,

J1M.

[trikolon]

A little user experience story with gigabyte 890fx-ud5 rev. 2.0

Hi everybody,
maybe my little story helps someone, so want to let you know what i learnd the past few days ;)

I bought this beautyful mainboard because of IOMMU support. I am used th Gentoo Linux for some years now and i worked with xen, maybe 1 year ago, then switched to KVM because of mainline kernel support and better powermanagement.

So far KVM worked good, until i got my new board. Because i wanted to use IOMMU. From this point my whole system got unstable, a lot of kernel backtraces and IOMMU was not working even for simple passthrough stuff. I updated my system to the last official F4A Bios and IOMMU wasnt enabled. I saw that by browsing the output of dmesg. only GART was enabled. (IVRS tables were missing too)
So i switched to the "beta" bios mentioned in this thread. Now i was able to passthrough a PCIe lan card to one of my KVM guests. But inside the guest was no lan card.. no new hardware.. nothing..
After getting really frustrated i decided to install debian and xen (4.0.1 with pv ops kernel from testing repo). With this setup everything was working. Right now i passthrought a PCI wlan card and a PCIe Lan card to one DomU (www.ipfire.org - Home) and everything is working! I am happy now ;)

Fedora 13 and Debian 6.0 and Gentoo 64 bit machines are running right now, too.

So, maybe my little story can help to avoid problems..

Ben

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Thanks for posting your findings for others!

Enjoy your working IOMMU now!

[ConiKost]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Hi,
I flashed F4 Bios von my GA-890FXA-UD7 and there is now an IOMMU Option. But I am unable to use it. When I activate it, no operation system is booting. After the HDDs and ROMs are initialized, there would be normal an "Loading Operating System" message. But with enabled IOMMU, this message is missing and no system is booting

Any ideas?

[artdrivers]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Anytime the Bios is flashed you would want to access the Bios Setup program. Then modify basic system configuration settings or activate certain system features that were set before the flash. When you flash the Bios all the settings that were modified previously will be set to the updated flash's default settings. Sometimes it just requires Load Optimized Defaults. Some other examples are the memory voltage, timings, SATA controllers such as RAID or AHCI, HDD boot priority, and other settings need to be reset to the settings that were present before the updated flash.

[onitake]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

I've had the IOMMU option enabled since it became available (F4a), and there was no negative impact on normal operation. IOMMU passthrough itself is a different story, of course. This also applies to the F4 BIOS. Your problem could also be related to other factors, for example an attached USB mass storage device, or BIOS misconfiguration as pointed out above. The 890FXA BIOS sometimes stalls if it can't detect a proper filesystem on a USB disk. I haven't found out yet how to disable this. Gave me a few headaches before I noticed I left my USB pen drive plugged in and it wouldn't boot because of that. :)

[ConiKost]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Hi,
thanks for your answers. Should I try to flash via DOS? (I flashed first time via Q-Update)
I'll try the tipp with the usb devices.

What I already tested is, that I set in BIOS "fail-save defaults" and changed only IOMMU to enabled. This also didn't worked and gave me the results of my previous post. (Mainboard boots, hangs after initialize of HDDs and ROMs)

[artdrivers]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

onitake Have you tried to disable usb storage devices in Bios setup?

Integrated Peripherals
OnChip SATA Controller [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Type [Native IDE]
x OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type IDE
x OnChip SATA RAID5 Support Enabled
OnChip SATA3.0 Support [Enabled]
Onboard GSATA/IDE Ctrl [Enabled]
Onboard GSATA/IDE Mode [IDE]
Onboard ESATA controller [Enabled]
Onboard ESATA Mode [IDE]
Onboard LAN1 Function [Enabled]
Onboard LAN1 Boot ROM [Disabled]
Onboard LAN2 Function [Enabled]
Onboard LAN2 Boot ROM [Disabled]
} SMART LAN1 [Press Enter]
} SMART LAN2 [Press Enter]
Onboard Audio Function [Enabled]
Onboard 1394 Function [Enabled]
Onboard USB 3.0 Controller [Enabled]
USB Controllers [Enabled]
[COLOR="darkred"]Scroll down in Integrated Peripherals[/COLOR]
USB Legacy Function [Enabled]
USB Storage Function [[COLOR="darkred"]Disabled[/COLOR]]
Onboard Serial Port 1 [3F8/IRQ4]
Onboard Parallel Port [378/IRQ7]
Parallel Port Mode [SPP]
x ECP Mode Use DMA 3

[artdrivers]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

Should I try to flash via DOS?

It should not be neccesary to flash again if you had a successful flash.

fail-save defaults?

Load Optimized Defaults save y and exit. Then set your memory voltage to manufacturers specifications, Set the Integrated Peripherals SATA controllers to where you had them set before you flashed. IDE, AHCI,RAID. To make the correct changes it is important to know what type or how many hard drives you are using. Where you have the drives plugged in, and which mode your OS is setup to. IDE, RAID, or AHCI. Also another thing try to disable floppy drive support where it says "1.44M, 3.5" to None in Standard CMOS Features.

Standard CMOS Features
Date (mm:dd:yy) Wed, Mar 24 2010
Time (hh:mm:ss) 22:31:24
} IDE Channel 0 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 0 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 1 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 1 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 2 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 2 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 4 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 4 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 5 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 5 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 7 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 7 Slave [None]
Drive A [[COLOR="darkred"]None[/COLOR]]
Floppy 3 Mode Support [Disabled]

[ConiKost]

Re: GA-890FXA-UD5 IOMMU BIOS Switch?

onitake Have you tried to disable usb storage devices in Bios setup?

Integrated Peripherals
OnChip SATA Controller [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Type [Native IDE]
x OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type IDE
x OnChip SATA RAID5 Support Enabled
OnChip SATA3.0 Support [Enabled]
Onboard GSATA/IDE Ctrl [Enabled]
Onboard GSATA/IDE Mode [IDE]
Onboard ESATA controller [Enabled]
Onboard ESATA Mode [IDE]
Onboard LAN1 Function [Enabled]
Onboard LAN1 Boot ROM [Disabled]
Onboard LAN2 Function [Enabled]
Onboard LAN2 Boot ROM [Disabled]
} SMART LAN1 [Press Enter]
} SMART LAN2 [Press Enter]
Onboard Audio Function [Enabled]
Onboard 1394 Function [Enabled]
Onboard USB 3.0 Controller [Enabled]
USB Controllers [Enabled]
[COLOR=darkred]Scroll down in Integrated Peripherals[/COLOR]
USB Legacy Function [Enabled]
USB Storage Function [[COLOR=darkred]Disabled[/COLOR]]
Onboard Serial Port 1 [3F8/IRQ4]
Onboard Parallel Port [378/IRQ7]
Parallel Port Mode [SPP]
x ECP Mode Use DMA 3

Hi.
I've tried this and it did not work. Same problems again.

It should not be neccesary to flash again if you had a successful flash.
Load Optimized Defaults save y and exit. Then set your memory voltage to manufacturers specifications, Set the Integrated Peripherals SATA controllers to where you had them set before you flashed. IDE, AHCI,RAID. To make the correct changes it is important to know what type or how many hard drives you are using. Where you have the drives plugged in, and which mode your OS is setup to. IDE, RAID, or AHCI. Also another thing try to disable floppy drive support where it says "1.44M, 3.5" to None in Standard CMOS Features.

Standard CMOS Features
Date (mm:dd:yy) Wed, Mar 24 2010
Time (hh:mm:ss) 22:31:24
} IDE Channel 0 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 0 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 1 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 1 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 2 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 2 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 4 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 4 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 5 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 5 Slave [None]
} IDE Channel 7 Master [None]
} IDE Channel 7 Slave [None]
Drive A [[COLOR=darkred]None[/COLOR]]
Floppy 3 Mode Support [Disabled]

I've loaded Load Optimized Defaults and it also didn't worked. Still the same problem with IOMMU. Floppy is disabled, as I don't have any more one. Only USB-Floppy.

Any Ideas?