[clug] KVM & Virt-Manager

[George at Clug]

    Further to my previous reply, I find that there is hardware
pass-through for 
kvm.  see 
https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/virtualization/html/book.virt/chap.virtualization.introduction.html#ann.vt.io.require

Although I can load  the vfio-pci driver it has no effect - my
mainboard is too 
old to support IOMMU.

Note that shared video hardware is not (yet ?) supported and that you
would 
need two or more video cards if you are not running headless or want
more than 
one VM.

Would be interested to know how you fare - I might yet get an excuse
for a 
mainboard upgrade :-)

Cheers,
Rod

===============================================

Rodney,

Thanks for your response.  

I don't need great performance, I just want Cinnamon not to run in
software rendering mode.  Hardware passthough is going too far for my
needs, and has issues with portability of the Virtual Machine when
moving it to another computer/server.  I guess I should at least give
it a try just for the experience, but that is a later project.

As VMware Workstation's video graphic card emulation is good enough to
support Cinnamon without Cinnamon using software rendering so I guess
I will end up using VMware Workstation for testing various desktop
operating systems as virtual machines.

You asked about how I change the emulated video card in KVM, well I
usually use Virt-Manager, however at times I also directly edit the
VMs configuration file using;
# virsh edit DebianCinnamon
where DebianCinnamon is the name I gave to the virtual machine.

I am hoping that I get the opportunity to demonstrate various OSs and
their Desktop Environments (GUIs) at the next CLUG meeting (or maybe a
later one), and then to get peoples thoughts on what they like in a
user interface and what they don't like. I have my own preferences,
but it is good to hear what others prefer.

Regards,

George.

Further to my previous reply, I find that there is hardware
pass-through for 


 kvm.  see 
https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/virtualization/html/book.virt/chap.virtualization.introduction.html#ann.vt.io.require

Although I can load  the vfio-pci driver it has no effect - my
mainboard is too 
old to support IOMMU.

Note that shared video hardware is not (yet ?) supported and that you
would 
need two or more video cards if you are not running headless or want
more than 
one VM.

Would be interested to know how you fare - I might yet get an excuse
for a 
mainboard upgrade :-)

Cheers,

Rod
f
f