Arch Linux

GeorgeK

Member

Registered: 2013-12-26

Posts: 8

[Solved] xen domu gui problems

I'm trying to set up a laptop with xen and a number of graphical domu.

I've installed arch and xen 4.5.0 and they are working fine as far as I can see.  I'm running xfce in dom0 and have some console based domu running arch all fine.

I can't get a graphical domu without problems though.  I'm working with arch only so far and I have had:
- PV domu doesn't display a window using sdl
- PV domu using vnc gets two mouse pointers, one on the physical screen and one in the domu window, which separate if I change the default window size
- HVM domu will display a window using sdl but the mouse pointer is missing
- HVM domu with vnc only shows the mouse pointer for the physical screen so clicks act somewhere unknown

I've read all the documentation I can find and googled everything I can think of but I'm stuck now.  I suspect that all the documentation saying things "just work" is based on heavier weight distros and I'm missing some package(s) that aren't stated as dependencies but, other than guessing, I don't know what to try any more.  There is nothing in any logs which points me to anything.

I haven't included any hardware or config details as I don't know what, if any, would help and I don't want to make this post any longer than it is already.

I did have ideas of comparing the various options but now I'm not really bothered how I get a graphical domu working so any help at all will be appreciated.

Last edited by GeorgeK (2015-04-15 21:10:50)

GeorgeK

Member

Registered: 2013-12-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] xen domu gui problems

I've narrowed this down a bit at least.  Busy with the day job but here is an update in case it triggers anything from anyone ...

Installing Win7 or Xubuntu in HVMs both work fine with a mouse pointer using SDL.

I installed Arch into a qemu VM on another laptop and this gave exactly the same symptoms.  At least that suggests xen isn't the problem.

As qemu has more (documented) options I tried using the vmware video driver and this gave me a mouse pointer!  The fbdev and vesa drivers both give the problem.

My next steps as soon as I have time will be to compare the versions of the problem video drivers with xubuntu and also to see what happens if I try specifying the vmware driver in my xen config file.  I'm hoping to avoid the cirrus driver but I will have to try that as well.

GeorgeK

Member

Registered: 2013-12-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] xen domu gui problems

Thanks to Zir Blazer via the xen mailing list I now have a workaround:

Install xf86-video-fbdev and add a conf file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d containing:

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Device0"
   Driver "fbdev"
EndSection

I have opened a bug