[vfio-users] Awful boot times, current OVMF to blame?

Wed Jul 26 11:24:12 UTC 2017

I just dug out the RPM from which I've extracted the firmware files:
edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160714.b1992.gfc3f005.noarch.rpm

I've made it available online, in case anyone wants to give it a try:
https://exa.flopser.de/s/z3cjqFUlZ2gBPCy

Cheers,
Hristo

July 26, 2017 10:17 AM, "Hagbard Celine" <hagbardcelin at gmail.com> wrote:

> After seeing that the older version fixed the problem for John and
> checking my archive of OVMF builds. I conclude that there is a
> upstream regression that manifest first in versions between
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160323.b1631.ga7b1590.noarch.rpm and
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160419.b1737.gc4cc609.noarch.rpm, then gets
> worse at newer versions. (Unless it is two issues, the first only
> responsible for approx. 5 sec boot delay)
> 
> Timing form pressing Power-On in Virt-manager to the circle under win
> 10 logo shows:
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160323.b1631.ga7b1590.noarch.rpm: 18 sec
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160324.b1635.gf0bbcdf.noarch.rpm: 20 sec
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160419.b1737.gc4cc609.noarch.rpm: 25 sec
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160829.b2090.g5f53a7a.noarch.rpm: 87 sec
> 
> Also edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160510.b1805.g05b2f9c.noarch.rpm hangs with
> no-cpu-usage, and
> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160829.b2090.g5f53a7a.noarch.rpm is the first
> version with cpu at 100% until windows starts booting.
> 
> 2017-07-26 0:49 GMT+01:00, Blair Bethwaite <blair.bethwaite at gmail.com>:
> 
>> Is there an upstream OVMF bug for the root cause or is it still unknown?
>> 
>> On 26 Jul. 2017 08:41, "John Koelndorfer" <jkoelndorfer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Good news, folks!
>>> 
>>> Hagbard was kind enough to send an older build of OVMF he had lying
>>> around
>>> and suggested I try it. I did, and I am happy to report my VM boots very
>>> fast again! For safekeeping, I have committed it to my GitHub repository:
>>> https://github.com/jkoelndorfer/local-tools/blob
>>> master/workstation/vfio/edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20150804.b1143.
>>> g8ca1489.noarch.rpm. I believe that when I did my initial VFIO setup, I
>>> used a package from the AUR which may have been just old enough to avoid
>>> the problem.
>>> 
>>> I may experiment some and see if any of the qemu parameters provided by
>>> Hristo make a difference with a current version of OVMF. For now, I'm
>>> happy
>>> my VM is booting quickly.
>>> 
>>> Thanks very much for your help.
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:22 PM, John Koelndorfer
>>> <jkoelndorfer at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>> 
>> An update:
>> 
>> The slow boot does not occur if I remove host devices from the virtual
>> machine (without any other configuration changes). It doesn't matter
>> whether GPU, USB, or both are passed in. Any device being passed in at
>> all
>> triggers the problem, so it's something related to the physical device
>> passthrough I think.
>> 
>> An older version of OVMF did not help, nor did booting a non-Windows OS.
>> I tried two alternate versions of OVMF from here:
>> https://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=edk2-ovmf. One
>> from 2016 November, one from 2016 April. I initially did my last VFIO
>> setup
>> in 2016 July.
>> 
>> I also tried the pc-i440fx machine, per Hristo's suggestion (though I
>> tried 2.6, which was what my last configuration used).
>> 
>> Hristo, it seems your setup is very similar to mine, so I have a few
>> questions for you:
>> 
>> * Are you using libvirt?
>> * Could you send the qemu arguments for your VM?
>> * What are your kernel boot parameters?
>> 
>> My suspicion now is that libvirt is doing some extra configuration that
>> I'm not. I looked at my old libvirt XML file and nothing is jumping out
>> at
>> me, so maybe it's a hardcoded default behavior.
>> 
>> Thanks for all the suggestions so far, folks.
>> 
>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 4:03 PM, Hagbard Celine <hagbardcelin at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi, just registered to the list to share my experience on this;
>> 
>> I've been getting my OVMF builds from kraxel.org since
>> edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20150804.b1143.g8ca1489.noarch.rpm and was
>> regularly updating when new builds came.
>> Somwhere around edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20151221.b1390.g5ba9f06.noarch.rpm
>> boot with large amounts of memory got slower.
>> And around edk2.git-ovmf-x64-0-20160324.b1634.g3decba3.noarch.rpm the
>> EFI part of boot could last about 15min with 16GB assigned to VM out
>> of a total of 32GB. Lovering the assigned memory for VM to below 8GB
>> resulted in normal boot times.
>> 
>> PS. The version numbers are approximations, my recollection is not
>> exact.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> vfio-users mailing list
>> vfio-users at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users
>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> vfio-users mailing list
>>> vfio-users at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users
> 
> _______________________________________________
> vfio-users mailing list
> vfio-users at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users