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--- gpu_accelerated_vm_with_kvm [01.10.2018 18:07] – [3rd Try: Nice DCV] Pascal Suter
+++ gpu_accelerated_vm_with_kvm [28.11.2018 23:30] – [retry DCV] Pascal Suter
@@ Line 280: / Line 280: @@
 so far i could only test this from a very slow connection in a hotel abroad and it is amazing how much faster both DCV and HP RGS are compared to normal RDP. DCV seems to perform very similar or maybe even a bit better than RGS with this extremely low bandwidth (too low really to use any sort of remote desktop with full HD, not to mention 4k).. so at the moment, except for the high priche tag, DCV is in my eyes the winner so far.
+===== retry DCV =====
+dcv was running very unreliably.. it crashed often when i went to full screen with 4k and it had performance problems with resolutions in the 4k range.. i noticed however, that my method of copying the windows image and then first uninstall the HP stuff before i installed DCV was probably not the best as for example the display driver for the virtual display was not called DCV Display but something else, so i think there might have been some leftovers around which interfere with DCV.. so in order to get rid of all that i will retry the dcv installation with a new windows install.
+also i noticed that the performance of my virtual disk was lousy (10MB/s) so i am now using an LVM volume on a physical disk rather than an image on a zfs storage.
+here is the command line to start the vm:
+  qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -k de-ch -name windows -drive format=raw,file=/dev/vms/dcv,if=virtio,format=raw,index=0 -m 9000 -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net0,mac=52:54:00:01:00:01 -netdev tap,id=net0 -cdrom Win10_1803_English_x64.iso -drive file=virtio-win.iso,media=cdrom,index=1 -monitor tcp:127.0.0.1:5801,server,nowait -boot once=d -cpu host,kvm=off -smp cpus=8,cores=8 -device vfio-pci,host=05:00.0 -monitor vc -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=/bulk/vm/OVMF_VARS.windows10.fd -rtc base=localtime -balloon none -serial none -parallel none -M q35 -vnc :1
+as far as speed goes, this worked out a lot better, however i could not get DCV to run reliably.
+this time i've created a snapshot prior to installing DCV and i later cloned that snapshot to install RGS on a "plain" clone of the windows install in a second LVM volume. Here is my command to start the RGS VM:
+  qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -k de-ch -name windows -drive format=raw,file=/dev/vms/rgs,if=virtio,format=raw,index=0 -m 9000 -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net0,mac=52:54:00:01:00:01 -netdev tap,id=net0 -cdrom Win10_1803_English_x64.iso -drive file=virtio-win.iso,media=cdrom,index=1 -monitor tcp:127.0.0.1:5801,server,nowait -boot once=d -cpu host,kvm=off -smp cpus=8,cores=8 -monitor vc -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=/bulk/vm/OVMF_VARS.windows10.fd -rtc base=localtime -balloon none -serial none -parallel none -M q35 -vnc :1 -device vfio-pci,host=05:00.0
+RGS runs smooth and windows feels reasonably fast too with the SSD as storage behind it. however, When the vm is left running over night usually the next morning it hangs or is so slow that one often can't even shut it down properly. I don't know why that is, i've deactivated all power saving features of windows, screen blanking etc. but I still have this issue. The machine hangs the same when I connect vie windows RDP. Also in those cases where i can still see something, I usually get alot of horizontal lines as artefacts on the screen both with RGS and RDP. The only solution is then to shut down the VM and start it again, a Reboot (instead of a power cycle) will make the VM fast again but the Artefacts remain. so there is definately something wrong with my VM here. This needs further investigation!
+==== LVM stuff ====
+just as a quick side note: here is how you create and revert to a snapshot in lvm.  using dd you can also copy a snapshot into a new lvm volume if the new volume is at least the size of the snapshotted one.
+create a snapshot:
+  lvcreate -s -L 50G -n win10base /dev/vms/dcv
+revert to a snapshot:
+  lvconvert --merge /dev/vms/win10base
+==== using a vm with just the forwarded GPU ====
+this is the ultimate goal. so far i could not get this to work, whenver i booted a vm without a emulated graphics card i could no longer connect to it. and it was hard to debug as i had no "local" screen to connect to. however, i recently connected a monitor to the GPU and found out, that the reason why i could not connect was in fact very simple: once the emulated graphics adapter is no longer presence, the pci-id of the emulated NIC changes and windows detects it as a new ethernet adapter despite it having the same MAC. So the vm actually got a DHCP assigned ip rather than the fixed one i had configured. I could then connect to the dhcp assigned ip and set the same fixed ip on the "second" interface which now works fine.
+to start a vm without a emulated graphics card, use ''-nographic -vga none'' in your command line.