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I There is method described but this will affect all virtual machines on the same XenServer host, it is described below (qemu-dm-wrapper). Knowing it is possible to \u2018swap\u2019 the videocard in a virtual machine and adding video memory by adding parameters to the QEMU<\/a> (open source machine emulator and virtualizer) process.<\/p>\n A Xen virtual machine consist of two processes and can be found with ps aux | grep qemu<\/font><\/p>\n When the video adapter is \u2018swapped\u2019 the result of the ps<\/font> command is:<\/p>\n As you can see two parameters are added:<\/p>\n Since there is no configurable parameter per VM (xe vm-param-set<\/font>) I looked for a solution to inject the parameter via another parameter. In github.com I found the xenops.ml<\/a> file that launched the qemu-dm-wrapper script. Here I found three possible candidates: Since both static_max_kib and vcpus are integer values there was no way I could add the parameter (-std-vga \u2013videoram 4), but boot\u2026 let\u2019s give it a shot!<\/p>\n Don\u2019t try this at home\/office\/wherever, it doesn\u2019t work (spoiler alert)<\/em><\/p>\n I added the parameters to the boot priority (default=dc: 1) cd-rom [d] and then 2) hdd ([c]) parameter of the virtual machine\u2026<\/p>\n …and started the virtual machine. Nothing happened, the VM could not be started. The \/var\/log\/messsage logfile should me why. <\/p>\n There is a check builtin the vl.c that verifies each boot option, a space is not allowed as a boot option.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve run some more test but it all came to a death end\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026until I found a pull request from David Scott (XenServer System Architect at Citrix Systems) with the name \u2018Add platform options for HVM display adapter and videoram<\/a>\u2019. So there will be a configurable parameter per VM that enable you to specify which video adapter to use and how many video ram it has. It has even been merged in the Xen code! On my XenServer 6.0.12 the parameters didn\u2019t work so I assume they\u2019re not included the XenServer code (yet). <\/p>\n I\u2019ve sent David an e-mail to ask him if and when it will be included in Citrix XenServer. To be continued!?!<\/strong><\/p>\n You can add the parameters to the QEMU<\/a> process by altering the qemu-dm-wrapper<\/font> file, which can be found in the \/opt\/xensource\/libexec<\/font> directory of the XenServer host.<\/p>\n Keep in mind this will change the behaviour of ALL virtual machines running on this (and only on this ) XenServer host .<\/em><\/p>\n <\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Now each virtual machine that gets started will receive a \u2018standard\u2019 VGA adapter instead of a Cirrus. Most importantly (for me), 32bpp is available.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently I had to setup a virtual machine on a Citrix XenServer host that could use 32bpp. This turned out harder than I thought because the default video adapter in a Xen virtual machine is a Cirrus with 4MB, and that video card is not capable of 32bpp.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[463,464,466,465,669],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-xenserver","tag-32bpp","tag-cirrus","tag-github","tag-xen","tag-xenserver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3917,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ingmarverheij.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>To be honest when I read Cirrus I had a flash-back to the times I bought my first computer; a 386SX 33Mhz with 2MB RAM and a Cirrus VGA card (on a ISA interface if I\u2019m not mistaking).<\/em><\/p>\n <\/h2>\n
Adding video memory<\/h2>\n
thought<\/strike> hoped it would be easy to just add some video memory with xe vm-param-set<\/font> but couldn\u2019t find a parameter to configure. In fact, there isn\u2019t (yet). <\/p>\n65556 13951 7.7 1.3 31380 9720 ? SLsl 12:52 0:01 qemu-dm-21 -d 21 -m 4096 -boot dc -serial pty -vcpus 1 -vncunused -k en-us -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=66:18:15:10:62:0a,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,bridge=xenbr0,ifname=tap21.0 -acpi -videoram 4 -M xenfv -monitor pty -vnc 127.0.0.1:1\nroot 13956 0.0 0.4 26464 3552 ? S 12:52 0:00 qemu-dm-21 -d 21 -m 4096 -boot dc -serial pty -vcpus 1 -vncunused -k en-us -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=66:18:15:10:62:0a,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,bridge=xenbr0,ifname=tap21.0 -acpi -videoram 4 -M xenfv -monitor pty -vnc 127.0.0.1:1<\/pre>\n
65565 18611 0.0 0.6 26456 4568 ? SLsl 13:56 0:00 qemu-dm-30 -d 30 -m 4096 -boot dc -serial pty -vcpus 1 -vncunused -k en-us -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=66:18:15:10:62:0a,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,bridge=xenbr0,ifname=tap30.0 -acpi -videoram 4 -M xenfv -monitor pty -vnc 127.0.0.1:1 -std-vga -videoram 4\nroot 18616 0.0 0.4 26456 3540 ? S 13:56 0:00 qemu-dm-30 -d 30 -m 4096 -boot dc -serial pty -vcpus 1 -vncunused -k en-us -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=66:18:15:10:62:0a,model=rtl8139 -net tap,vlan=0,bridge=xenbr0,ifname=tap30.0 -acpi -videoram 4 -M xenfv -monitor pty -vnc 127.0.0.1:1 -std-vga -videoram 4<\/pre>\n
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xe vm-param-set uuid=
Jun 21 14:00:47 xenserver-orulmhui kernel: device vif31.0 entered promiscuous mode\nJun 21 14:00:47 xenserver-orulmhui fe: qemu-dm-31[19173]: domid: 31\nJun 21 14:00:47 xenserver-orulmhui fe: qemu-dm-31[19173]: Invalid boot device ' '\nJun 21 14:00:47 xenserver-orulmhui fe: 19173 (\/opt\/xensource\/libexec\/qemu-dm-wrapper 31 -d 31 -m 4096 -boot dc -std-vga -se...) exitted with code 1\nJun 21 14:00:52 xenserver-orulmhui xapi: [error|xenserver-orulmhui|8220|Async.VM.start R:8311b4a1f5f7|xenops] watch: timeout while watching xenstore after 5.000000 seconds<\/pre>\n
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qemu-dm-wrapper<\/h2>\n
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