Accelerated graphics in vbox 6

[Jung-uk Kim]

On 19. 5. 21., Jung-uk Kim wrote:
> On 19. 5. 21., Johannes Lundberg wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> On 5/21/19 11:46 AM, Jung-uk Kim wrote:
>>> On 19. 5. 21., Johannes Lundberg wrote:
>>>> Hi vbox folks! (cc: x11 list)
>>>>
>>>> According to this
>>>> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=virtualbox-60-vmsvga&num=1
>>>> vbox can now use the vmwgfx kernel driver for accelerated graphics. With
>>>> that I assume that virtualbox's own drm driver project is scrapped.
>>> Actually, they moved vboxvideo KMS/DRM driver to Linux kernel.
>>>
>>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/vboxvideo
>>
>> It's been there for quite some time and no progress have been made for
>> the time I've been tracking it. Seems abandoned to me and my impression
>> is that that one is scrapped in favor of vmwgfx... Do anyone know if
>> vboxvideo is suppose to be in working state (the one in linux kernel)?
> 
> It was added to staging for almost two years ago.  Please see the
> original patch submission.
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/726355/
> 
> Recently they moved it out of staging (via merging drm-next-2019-05-09).
> 
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=131abc56e1bacef23cb7b340519d36e2f5adb2a9
> 
> It means Linux 5.2 release will have it by default.
> 
> It doesn't look dead to me. ;-)
> 
>>> And DDX driver was moved to Xorg repository.
>>>
>>> https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-vbox
>>>
>>>> I've been working on porting vmwgfx from Linux to our linuxkpi. It works
>>>> pretty well with freebsd 13 as vmware guest on macos as long you're
>>>> using only one vcpu (some race condition issue to be solved..).  It
>>>> would be cool if we could get accelerated graphics in vbox, with freebsd
>>>> as both host and guest since vmware can't run as host on freebsd.
>>> Can you please port the vboxvideo driver to linuxkpi?
>>
>> vmwgfx seems like the better choice if it's used by both vmware and vbox
>> (v6+). But if it's suppose to be in a working state I can take a look..
> 
> ...
> 
> AFAIK VirtualBox graphics stack is in a working state.

I found it is ported now.

https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/kms-drm/commits/drm-v5.0

I tried it and it's somewhat working, thanks!

However, I found two problems.

1.  Console does not refresh automatically.

When vboxvideo.ko is loaded, console stays black.  Console preview looks
fine, though.  I found it's redrawn when the window is resized.  Note I
only tried it on a Windows host.  I will try it with FreeBSD host soon
but I think it'll be the same.

2.  Console does not resize dynamically.

Actually, it is not vboxvideo.ko's fault.  It happens because vt(4) does
not support monitor hotplug.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_resizing

After I tried it out, I realized vboxvideo.ko is just a KMS driver and
modesetting driver is used for X.org.  IOW, we cannot resize X.org
window dynamically when vboxvideo.ko is used.  With vboxvideo.ko or
vboxvideo_drv.so, 3D acceleration is still handled by the Chromium
OpenGL pass-through stub.  As always, it may be enabled with setting
OPENGL option for emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions.

BTW, Phoronix once reported 3D acceleration with VMware driver does not
look good on VirtualBox anyway. :-p

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=27348

Jung-uk Kim

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