XEN passthrough NIC on SuSE

javasee

The idea is to bind the pci device (in your case a nic) to the pcibackmodule in the dom0 guest and then assign it to the target domU.

There are two main ways to achieve that, depending on how long you want the change to last:

a) If you want to assign the pci device to the target domU on a transient basis, do a manual allocation.
The allocation will only last until you reboot the system or the domU guest.

b) If you want the assigment to remain persistent among system reboots,stick to the automatic approach, that basically consists on editing themodprobe conf file, building a new initrd file system and changing theaffected domU guest configuration file so that it includes the PCIdevice id in the pci parameter.

I'll only cover here the transient one.

For illustration purposes I'll use my wireless nic. Adapt the procedure to your system.

a) Manual allocation

Having your system started in Xen mode, from a dom0 bash root session do the following:

-Step 1: Find if your dom0 have support for the pciback module.If you are using open Suse 11, and are using the stock kernel, itshould have it:

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