[SOLVED] PCI(e) passthrough of a device that shares vendor:device id

[autumnwalker]

Hello,

I have an HP DL380P G8 with four port onboard NIC and a PCIe four port NIC. They are both seen by Proxmox as "Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)"

Is there some way add the PCI(e) card to modprobe to exclude it from Proxmox and pass the entire card through to a VM? When I run "lspci -nnk | grep Ethernet" I get:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter [103c:169d]
03:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter [103c:169d]
03:00.2 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter [103c:169d]
03:00.3 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR Adapter [103c:169d]
0a:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331T Adapter [103c:3383]
0a:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331T Adapter [103c:3383]
0a:00.2 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331T Adapter [103c:3383]
0a:00.3 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331T Adapter [103c:3383]

You can see the subsystem is different - can I use that in modprobe?

 

[dcsapak]

hi,

you could try to simply pass it through, without blacklisting the driver/binding to vfio-pci beforehand. we normally do this during vm startup, and i my experience network cards handle
this mostly fine (in contrast to some more "complicated" cards like gpus, etc.)

if it does not work, see this post:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/pci-passthrough-selection-with-identical-devices.63042/

the procedure is sadly a bit more involved..

 

[autumnwalker]

Thanks @dcsapak! I will try just passing them through. I have two other related questions:

1) I was playing around with just passing them through - when I go to add the card each port on the card shows as an individual device (0000:0a:00.0, .1, .2, .3) (see first screenshot), but when I try to add more than one port they all show up as 0000:0a:00 (see second screenshot). Does that mean that passing one port actually passes the entire card or do I need to pass each port individually and it's just not displaying "correctly" under the Hardware tab?





2) I think I can do SR-IOV with this server / card. Would I be better off doing SR-IOV or just passing the whole card?

 

[leesteken]

It goes from 0a:00.x to 0a:00 when you select All Functions. Selecting All Functions will passthrough all parts of 0a:00, which means all four ethernet controllers. If you want to passthrough only one or some of them, add each of them but do not select All Functions.

 

[autumnwalker]

It goes from 0a:00.x to 0a:00 when you select All Functions. Selecting All Functions will passthrough all parts of 0a:00, which means all four ethernet controllers. If you want to passthrough only one or some of them, add each of them but do not select All Functions.

That makes perfect sense! Thank you very much.

 

[autumnwalker]

Just passing the card through with "All Functions" appears to be working great. Thanks all!

The documentation at PCI(e) Passthrough - Proxmox VE confused me as I thought you had to blacklist the driver / binding.

 

[dcsapak]

Just passing the card through with "All Functions" appears to be working great. Thanks all!

great

The documentation at PCI(e) Passthrough - Proxmox VE confused me as I thought you had to blacklist the driver / binding.

the docs here are on the safe side. it does not hurt to blacklist the driver for passthrough, but it's not necessary everytime.

 

[Silcati]

Thanks @dcsapak! I will try just passing them through. I have two other related questions:

1) I was playing around with just passing them through - when I go to add the card each port on the card shows as an individual device (0000:0a:00.0, .1, .2, .3) (see first screenshot), but when I try to add more than one port they all show up as 0000:0a:00 (see second screenshot). Does that mean that passing one port actually passes the entire card or do I need to pass each port individually and it's just not displaying "correctly" under the Hardware tab?

View attachment 30640

View attachment 30641

2) I think I can do SR-IOV with this server / card. Would I be better off doing SR-IOV or just passing the whole card?

Hello autumnwalker,

I need help, how did you add the network devices?
I have a ProLiant ML350p Gen8 server, with 4 onboard NIC and PCIe four port NIC, NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1657]

The problem in the VM, the network is very slow, the network speed in the VM, its maximum transfer of 250 Mbps and its network device is VirtIO (paravirtualized).

I read that adding the network devices was solved