Preamble This guide describes performance optimizations for gaming on a virtual machine (VM) with GPU passthrough. In order to optimize the user experience for virtualized gaming, I started to pursue low latency and high performance. Especially since my main focus are demanding online multiplayer games. The Benchmarking Process I started benchmarking several setups (found on […]
Fighting error 43 – Nvidia GPU in a virtual machine
The infamous error 43 is triggered by the Nvidia Windows driver, in case it recognizes the GPU is used inside a virtual machine with GPU passthrough. This means the driver won’t load correctly during the system startup leaving you with cumbersome 800 by 600 display resolution. An examination of the Windows Device Manager will unveil […]
Virtual machine audio setup – or how to get pulse audio working
In this post, I compare several options of how to get the sound output from an KVM virtual machine guest, back into the host. I will compare spice server, pulse audio and a hardware solution. The Host runs an Asus Xonar DGX 5.1 PCIE sound card. In any case – harmonize sample rates of host […]
Reminder to myself: How to use fstab
This is a short reminder to myself about common mounting use-cases during boot time using fstab. Overview General Mount ext partitions (unix standart) Mount ntfs partitions (windows standart) Mount samba folders General In order to mount folder during boot, edit fstab via: sudo nano /etc/fstab Identify partitions via UUID no by name (e.g. not by […]
AMD Ryzen based passthrough setup between (X)Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10
Preamble The intent of this document is to provide a complete, step-by-step guide on how to setup a virtual machine(VM) with graphics cards(GPU) passthrough – detailed enough that even Linux rookies are able to participate. The final system will run Xubuntu 16.04 as host operating system(OS), and Windows 10 as guest OS, considering gaming as […]
USB-device passthrough setup for virtual machines
Still in draft version Several options exist for device passthrough Passthrough a complete USB controller and use an USB switch use a second mouse and keyboard virtual devices synergy Using USB controller to passthrough lspci -nn | grep USB 01:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:43b9] (rev 02) 06:00.0 USB controller […]
Configuring Hugepages to use in a virtual machine
Hugepages are an optional step during the VM configuration; it increases the RAM performance of the virtual machine. The downside is that the RAM allocated to the hugepages can not be used in the horst system, even if the guest isn’t running. The minimum size should be not smaller then 4GB. Check if hugepages are […]
Different ethernet setups for virtual machines
Still in draft: – using bridge device * -> easiest, fastest and most convenient way, but requires wired connection. – using network tap – using host mode libvirt’s default setup where the VM host more or less acts like a NAT router for all the virtual machines running on it. This works out of the […]
Storage setup for virtual machines
still in draft Use a raw image This is pretty easy to accomplish with good performance. For my 120GB SSD I created the raw image via: fallocate -l 111G /media/vm/win10.img edit the settings via the GUI. In order to access the storage space in windows use the VirtIO windows drivers. Select in the GUI the […]