PCI Passthrough?

[tophee]

Hi,
Is it possible to give a jail access to a pci card? I've done some searching and I believe it it might not be possible but I thought I'd ask in the definitive place.

In my particular instance I want to get my Mythtv jail to access my pci tuner card.

Thanks in advance

Chris

 

[jgreco]

No, it doesn't work that way. PCI passthrough is a virtualization technology that gives a VM direct access to a hardware device, which is then abstracted by the OS within that VM.

Generally speaking, UNIX does not allow direct access to a card. All access to system devices runs through the kernel, which provides drivers and controls access to the card. If the PCI tuner card has a driver that either exists in FreeNAS (probably not) or maybe could be loaded (quite possibly) then you could get access to the device through its driver within the jail, yes.

That's probably what you were trying to ask.

 

[tophee]

Hi jgreco. I think that is probably exactly what I am trying to ask. I will do some more reading and get back to you.

 

[jgreco]

Let us know more about what driver is needed ...

 

[tophee]

I think i know which driver it is. Think its the cx88 driver.

The card is a hauppauge nova - s2 - hd which uses the same firmware as the win tv hvr-4000, if memory serves.

 

[cyberjock]

One of our IRC regulars tried to get something like 5 different cards to work on FreeNAS. He gave up because it's cost him too much money to spend any more on another card just to experiment (and ultimately fail to get to work) with FreeNAS.

You are definitely welcome to continue in your effort, but be aware that others have tried and failed. :(

 

[Middling]

Going the Sat>IP way may be an easier/better solution. I don't know if MythTV supports it yet but i know TVheadend does.

 

[tophee]

Hi Cyberjock, yiu might well be right about the likelihood of failure. I will try and give it a go, though I'm not going to spend any money on it. If i can get it to work, great, if not I've enough spare hardware to build a separate machine to run a mythtv backend.

Middling - thanks for the suggestion, but as I say - I plan only to reuse old parts and not lighten my wallet on this.