[vfio-users] [BUG, HELP NEEDED] No signal (Invalid ROM) with some Asus Nvidia cards

[Hristo Iliev]

On 16.02.2016, at 20:24, Nicolas Roy-Renaud <nicolas.roy-renaud.1 at ens.etsmtl.ca> wrote:
> 
> I've been wanting to report this one for a while, but I was hoping I could gather some more information first to have a clear idea of what's wrong. Hopefully some people on the mailing list will be able to help us solve this.
> 
> The guest GPU I'm using on my current VFIO machine is an Asus-made GTX 970 (GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5). Although the BIOS is supposed to support UEFI (none of those on TechPowerUp do, but running GPU-Z on a base-metal Windows install proves mine actually does), whenever I try to perform a firmare dump from linux with the vfio driver or boot a VM that should claim this card, I get an "Invalid ROM contents" error. Last month, someone else came here asking about a similar issue, and I realized after asking a few questions that he was trying to pass an Asus-made GTX 750 (GTX750TI-PH-2GD5). As it turned out, he was experiencing the exact same issue I had before and managed to work around it using the same procedure.
> 
> As it turns out, the problem can be avoided when mounting the card on a live VM, which somehow bypasses the ROM check and runs without a hitch on my machine.
> 
> This has me believe that it might be a problem that's specific to Asus cards (and perhaps only their Nvidia cards or even just their Maxwell cards), but I'm not sure where the problem could possibly come from and whether it's related to vfio itself or if it's an issue on Asus' end. Either way, I'd need help from someone who's more familiar with vfio than I am to help diagnose the issue, or possibly someone else with the same isue so we could evaluate how widespread the problem actually is.

Hi Nicolas,

My GPU is the the same as yours - ASUS STRIX GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5. I’ve never experienced the problem you are describing. The card has been working flawlessly with OVMF in both my old Win 8.1 VM and then with my newer Win 10 VM. Both VMs are vanilla virt-manager creations, i.e. no fancy VGA ROM files or special command-line parameters for qemu.

Could it be due to e.g. a different GPU BIOS version? Have you reflashed/upgraded yours?

Cheers,
Hristo

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