Fedora Windows Spice/Virtio KVM drivers and tools (was Re: Red Hat QXL GPU Driver for Windows 7?)

[Simone Caronni]

Hello,

On 24 January 2013 11:31, Christophe Fergeau <cfergeau at redhat.com> wrote:

> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers
> My understanding is that they are based on the git repo linked there if
> this is the information you want.
>

Unfortunately no, they're totally different than the one Fedora provides.
The one Fedora provides follow the same versioning of the RHEL ones except
they're not WHQL signed.

An example; netkvm for xp in the git repo:

DriverVer = 03/15/2007,1.0.0.0

In the Fedora iso:

DriverVer=01/22/2013,51.64.104.5200

This is the RHEL numbering, where the ".64." means it's slated for the RHEL
6.4 inclusion.

Also if you fetch this [1], on which the fedora iso are based, it unpacks
as "internal-kvm-guest-drivers-windows" and the changelog is totally
different. The 2 source codes are totally unrelated, they are separate
repositories. The one on github seems a repository where some fixes are
tested, that's all.

[1]
http://people.redhat.com/vrozenfe/build-48/virtio-win-prewhql-0.1-48-sources.zip

> > For this use case, all they need to do is to grab the spice-guest-tools
> > > installer and run that, the mess you describe is the exact reason why
> I'm
> > > building this installer.
> > >
> >
> > The installer works good and is a very nice addition, but the QXL drivers
> > do not work, as it's not signed.
>
> I'm not sure how to test whether it's signed or not, but I just tested that
> the driver works in a winxp 32 bit install.
>

That's exactly the problem, XP allows unsigned drivers; windows 7 doesn't.


> > To summarize, what would be nice to have is the addition of recently
> built
> > Spice Agents and signed QXL drivers in the Fedora iso.
>
> I'm not sure qxl + spice agent really belongs in the virtio-win ISO on
> alt.fedoraproject.org, as these virtio drivers can be useful to people not
> using SPICE at all.


I don't know, I don't understand why a user should choose a worst user
experience when they could have it better with the same functionality. I
mean, using QXL/Spice with virt-manager does not have any drawback compared
to Cirrus+VNC. The client is different, but on the contrary there are only
benefits.

Anyway the problem leads back to the QXL drivers; if the latest QXL drivers
were signed and parked at spice-space.org it would not be a big deal even
if not included in the iso; but unfortunately they are not.

However, if you are willing to build such an ISO from
> the bits and pieces from this virtio-win ISO and from spice-space.org, it
> would make sense to provide it alongside the spice-guest-tools installer on
> spice-space.org.
>

I will do, a new "52" iso has come out for Fedora. Waiting on your Spice
Guest Tools 0.4 with latest Balloon Service and latest Spice Agent. :D

Many thanks.
--Simone


-- 
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of
the shore (R. W. Emerson).
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