Accelerated graphics in vbox 6

[Johannes Lundberg]

On 6/25/19 10:47 AM, Jung-uk Kim wrote:
> 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!


Hi! So you found it :)  The reason I ported it now was that I realized
that vboxideo does not build anymore with Xorg 1.20. Maybe it's
deprecated in favor of KMS+modesetting?

>
> 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.

Yeah I've been trying to debug this but it's somewhat tricky... Same
issue on VMWare. On VMWare I ended up copying the whole fb driver from
the kernel to the vmwgfx driver so I can refresh the screen without
adding extra KPI in the kernel (as a temporary solution). Need to figure
out why it works on real hardware but not in VMs.. It might just be
something simple...


>
> 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.

Yeah it would be nice to have the guest resize when resizing the window
on the host. Do you mean that this functionality is missing in the
modesetting ddx?

/Johannes

>
> 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
>