Z800 (E5620) vt-d & vt-x

[UtilityPanel]

Greetings!

According to https://ark.intel.com/, the E5620 processors in my Z800 support VT-x with EPT and VT-d, but I cannot figure out how to enable them in the Z800 BIOS (v. 3.60 Rev-A).

Might anyone here be able to walk me through the steps I need to take to enable VT-x with EPT and VT-d on my Z800 with twin E5620 processors?

Thank you!

[DGroves]

the settings for this are under: the bios section,   system Security

[UtilityPanel]

That's what I thought. I'm at home now. I'll report again soon from my office. I'll be surprised if I missed the settings for these features there, but maybe I did? Either way, I'll report back.

[SDH]

In some BIOS versions if Vt is turned off all its options disappear from the BIOS listing except the option to turn it back on.  Once you do that and back out of BIOS (remember to F10 save your changes on the way out) do a restart and there will be a full cold boot instead of just a restart, and the options will then finally show up again in the same area of BIOS.

[UtilityPanel]

I've seen that kind of behavior before in other BIOS.

I'm back at the office now, and in my system, "Security / System Security" includes the following entries:

Data Execution Preventation - Disabled

Virtualization Technology (VTx) - Enabled

Virtualization TEchnology Directed I/O (VT-d2) - Enabled

AES Instructions - Enabled

Those settings have persisted through several reboots.

What I don't see are any additional settings.

It seems to me that because the option for VTx and VT-d2 have both been enabled for several boots, maybe there just aren't controls for these settings in this version of the BIOS? Or might the limitation be in the hardware capabilities?

[DGroves]

the settings you see are all that there is,.... my z800 is exactly the same

just what were you looking for exactly?

also i would enable "Data Execution Prevention" unless your software explictly says to disable it

the link below describes what all of the bios options do on the z800

and for the most part also apply to the z400/600 workstations also

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01718191

[UtilityPanel]

Thank you for the link, @DGroves. I've added it to my bookmark index.

Thanks also for the recommendation to enable data execution prevention. I cannot remember the reason why I disabled it, so I'll re-enable it until such a time as I have reason to revert (and take note of why I did!).

Meanwhile, I am chasing down VT settings because the OS I am installing (Qubes OS) complains that the following two features are missing:

1. IOMMU/VT-d/AMD-Vi
2. Interrupt Remapping

Based on Intel's Ark, I am informed that these features are available in the E5620 CPUs in my Z800; but because Qubes OS performs a hardware check before installation begins (and reports that those two features on lacking), I am proceeding under the assumption that either the motherboard or chipset in my Z800 does not support those features or that the BIOS is not exposing them to the OS. Either way, I'd like to find out.

[DGroves]

of the 2 items you mention the first

1. IOMMU/VT-d/AMD-Vi

might be set using the z800 memory mapping option (UMA) this is a toggle option ON/OFF that says to either use all ram as one memory pool or split the ram into 2 banks with each cpu only using the ram attached to that bank

these links might help you

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-users/SD8flq59vjU/teioAr7dAQAJ

the second error, appears to be bios /chipset related on the z800 x58 based chipsets

https://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=7014344

[UtilityPanel]

Thanks again for the links, @DGroves!

I'm headed out of the office now, but I'll read them tonight after i get home.

I'll report back either tomorrow or Monday when I return to the office.

[UtilityPanel]

I located the "NUMA Split Mode" options under the "Advanced" and "Chipset/Memory" menus. I tried all the possible settings, but I am still receiving the same error from the Qubes OS installation process.

I also followed up on the other link to the Qubes OS support forum and opened a ticket there to see if someone in that group might have some recommendations.

Meanwhile, I'll keep this ticket open a while. Someone else on this forum may have some ideas to share. I'll also return here and report on what I learned form the Qubes OS forum. Even if this problem is not surmountable, at least we may be able to spare the next Z800 operator from reinventing this wheel.