2008-09-19T12:43:59-04:00
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OpenGL apps running inside a Virtual Machine (VM) can use VMGL to take advantage of graphics hardware acceleration. VMGL can be used on VMware guests, Xen HVM domains (depending on hardware virtualization extensions) and Xen paravirtual domains, using XVnc or the virtual framebuffer. Although we haven't tested it, VMGL should work for qemu, KVM, and VirtualBox. VMGL is available for X11-based guest OS's: Linux, FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. Finally, VMGL is GPU-independent: we support ATI, Nvidia and Intel GPUs.
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<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1"><b>
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">What is this:</font></h2>
<font face="Arial" size="2">
<dl>
<dt>OpenGL apps running inside a Virtual Machine (VM) can use VMGL to take advantage of graphics hardware acceleration.
VMGL can be used on VMware guests, Xen HVM domains (depending on hardware virtualization extensions)
and Xen paravirtual domains, using XVnc or the virtual framebuffer.
Although we haven't tested it, VMGL should work for qemu, KVM, and
VIrtualBox.
VMGL is available for X11-based guest OS's: Linux, FreeBSD and
OpenSolaris. VMGL is GPU-independent: we support ATI,
Nvidia and Intel GPUs.</dt>
</dl>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1">
<img border="0" src="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/vmgl/unreal.png" width="480" height="360">
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">How to build:</font></h2>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>If you cloned the repository or
downloaded the tarball:</b></font></p>
<ul>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Copy the source into your guest (VM
or domain) and host (dom0, kernel hosting VMware, etc..)</b></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Type "make"</b></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>In the guest, type
"make install-guest"</b></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>In the host, type "make
install-host"</b></font></li>
</ul>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>RPMs "should just work".</b></font></p>
<p> </td>
</font></b>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1"><b><font face="Arial" size="2"><a name="software"></a>
</font></b>
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">How to Use:</font></h2>
<dl>
<font face="Arial" size="2"><b>There are two broad types of guests</b></font>
</dl>
<ul>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Guest without a framebuffer using Xvnc:
</font></b><font face="Arial" size="2"><b> restart vncserver after
installation.</b></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Guest with a framebuffer using Xorg:
modify Xorg configuration in the guest to include the vmglext module,
i.e.</b></font></li>
</ul>
<dl>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
Section "Module"</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
...</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
Load "vmglext"</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
...</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>and
restart Xorg.</b></font></dt>
<dt> </dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Then, for
all types of guests,
connect from the host to the domain using a viewer:</b></font></dt>
</dl>
<ul>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Vncviewer for guest with Xvnc, Xen
paravirtual guest with vncfb, or Xen HVM guest with vnc qemu-dm
output.</font></b></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>We provide a patch to enable sdlfb
for Xen paravirtual guests, and qemu-dm with sdl output for Xen HVM
guests.</b></font></li>
</ul>
<dl>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>After
authentication the viewer will output:</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
"Set GLSTUB var in the guest to point to port
<something>"</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Usually
<something> is 7001. In the guest
set the environment variable</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>
GLSTUB = <host_hostname>:<port_viewer_told_you></b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>and
things should work.</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"> </dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>You can
also use VMGL with X forwarding, regardless of the type of guest.
Start stub-daemon in the host, enable X forwarding from guest to
host, and set GLSTUB in the guest to <host_hostname>:7000. Try
your GL apps now.</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"> </dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>CAUTION:
In all cases, ports in the range of the 7000's have to remain open
between guest and host.</b></font></dt>
<dt style="line-height: 150%"> </dt>
<dt style="line-height: 100%"><font face="Arial" size="2"><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="../software/vmware_helper.tgz"><u>NEW</u></a><b>, VMware:
Is not easy to compose the 3D output on VMware's closed source GUI. Your best bet is to "guess" the XID of
the GUI window and pass it to stub-daemon with the -v switch. This </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="../software/vmware_helper.tgz">link</a><b>
will provide you with a tiny library I use to interpose bteween
VMware's GUI and X and find out the XID's used. I recommend you use
vnc or X forwarding to bypass this problem altogether.</b></font> </dt>
</dl>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1">
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">How to get Xen dom0 GPU kernel modules:</font></h2>
<dl>
<dt><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>A separate prerequisite for Xen is to
enable direct rendering on your dom0. You can check this by looking
into the output of glxinfo. </b></font></dt>
<dt><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>This depends on your graphics card: </b></font></dt>
</dl>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Intel cards such as i915: Kernel
modules are already part of the dom0 kernel tree. You should already
have direct rendering enabled in dom0.</b></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>ATI: In the tarball/repository source
tree, cd into fglrx and follow the instructions there. Or install </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="../software/fglrx-kmod-xen-8.28.8-1.i386.rpm"> this
rpm</a><b> in dom0. What is provided in this page has only beent tested
to work for an ATI Radeon X600 (PCI express) and a handful of
applications. Remember to modprobe fglrx, modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf to
use the fglrx driver, and restart X.</b></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>NVIDIA: Patch </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2006-03/msg00615.html">here</a><b>.
Also, </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://rpm.livna.org">livna</a><b>
provides rpm's for this (kmod-nvidia-xen0). Remember to modprobe nvidia,
modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use the nvidia driver, and restart X.</b></font></p>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1">
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">Capabilites</font></h2>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Roughly speaking, OpenGL up to version
1.5 is supported (sorry, no 2.0 shading languages,) with the following
exceptions: </b></font></p>
<ul>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>OpenGL 1.2 imaging functions related to histogram, min/max, convolution
and colortables (like you really needed them...)</b></font> </li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Display lists aren't fully
conformant: GL_COMPILE_AND_EXECUTE mode may not work reliably, specifically if there
is a glGet* call between glNewList and glEndList which gets state that
was set by a previous command compiled/executed inside the display list.</font></b></li>
</ul>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Roughly speaking (deja vu) GLX version
1.3 is supported, with the following exceptions: </b></font></p>
<ul>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">glXCopyContext</font></b></li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">glXCreateGLXPixmap</font></b></li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">glXDestroyGLXPixmap</font></b></li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">glXWaitGL</font></b></li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">glXWaitX</font></b></li>
<li><b><font face="Arial" size="2">None of the GLX 1.3
functions related to Pbuffers or visual configs are implemented.</font></b></li>
</ul>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>For more in-depth info, look into cr/doc/conformance.html
and cr/glapi_parser/APIspec.txt in the source tree, or /usr/share/doc/xen-gl/cr/conformance.html
if you've used an rpm. </b></font></p>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1">
<h2><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#111111">Other stuff</font></h2>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>This project has been graciously
sponsored by </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://www.google.com">Google</a><b>
through their </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html">Summer
of Code 2006</a><b> program, with mentoring by </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://dave.recoil.org/"> Dave Scott</a><b> and </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://anil.recoil.org/"> Anil
Madhavapeddy</a><b> from </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://www.xensource.com/">Xensource</a><b>.
</b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://code.google.com/soc/xensource/appinfo.html?csaid=1FD779F0E713E523">Here</a><b>
is the original project proposal.</b></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>The code is distributed under the </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#5">Modified
BSD licence</a><b> (listed in the "General" section of the
hyperlink.) Other </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html"> Free Software</a><b> licences apply as specified by the
authors of code reused in the context of this project.</b></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>References:</b></font></p>
<ul>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://chromium.sourceforge.net/">Chromium</a></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Jacob Gorm-Hansen's similar </b><a style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal" href="http://www.diku.dk/hjemmesider/ansatte/jacobg/gfx/">project</a></font></li>
</ul>
<hr color="#C0C0C0" size="1"><b><font face="Arial" size="2">
</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><i>Last Updated September 20th, 2008</i></font></p>
<p> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="849"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<dl>
<dt>Subversion <a href="https://vmgl.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/vmgl">repository
</a>hosted by sourceforge</dt>
<dd>svn co https://vmgl.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vmgl</dd>
<dd> </dd>
<dt>Tarballs (repository
snapshot): </dt>
<dt>
<a href="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/software/vmgl-0.1.tar.gz">vmgl-0.1.tar.gz</a>
</dt>
<dt>
<a href="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/software/vmgl-0.1.tar.bz2">vmgl-0.1.tar.bz2</a></dt>
<dd> </dd>
<dt>Distribution agnostic
RPMs: </font></dt>
<dt>
<a href="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/software/vmgl-host-0.1-1.i386.rpm">vmgl-host-0.1-1.i386.rpm</a> </dt>
<dt>
<a href="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/software/vmgl-guest-0.1-1.i386.rpm">vmgl-guest-0.1-1.i386.rpm</a></dt>
<dt> </dt>
</dl>
7
VMGL: OpenGL Hardware 3D Acceleration for Virtual Machines
2008-10-08T23:37:03-04:00