Steaming With KVM vga-passthrough linux->windows

[beardedchimp]

I have KVM running a linux host and windows guest.

Currently it means I can continue to use my computer (in linux) while games are running in windows.

Setting this up can be seen on https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768

I'd be interested to see if I can run In-Home streaming through the windows guest to anywhere else in the house or even running the streaming from the guest OS to host OS (this idea almost blows my mind, linux -> windows -> linux).

The benefit of this is that I would be able to continue to use the computer even while home steaming is running.

Currently I don't have an invite to test this, but I would be very interested in trying this setup.

Cheers.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

That should be possible with a bridged network adapter. I've kind of tested this with Virtualbox and Splashtop and VBox's built-in RDP remote desktop server. I can connect to the VM guest remotely those ways.

[blackout24]

That's exactly what I wanted to test aswell. Theoretically there shouldn't be a bandwith limit. If you could somehow emulate a 10 GbE bridged network adapter you could easily send 1080p @ 60 FPS uncompressed (3.98 Gbps) to the host and you wouldn't have any latency from the network ping, encoding or decoding.

[beardedchimp]

What sort of performance do you get running the VM through virtualbox? And are you running two graphics cards with one passed through to the VM?

Theoretically I could add an additional graphics card to the machine and run two instances of home steaming then steam to multiple devices in the house. Both hosts running on different steam accounts though.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Sadly, I believe I/O MMU virtualization is necessary for VGA and PCI passthrough to work, which is limited to motherboards that have solid support for it in the BIOS firmware--most don't. For everyone else we have to used the emulated graphics cards in VM guests, which generally have buggy / poor Direct3D acceleration support that will at best cause a significant framerate drop in VM games.

[beardedchimp]

Yeah I'm running a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 and a gtx 760 which both work fine with IOMMU passthrough.

I'm guessing in the future this capability will be built into much more hardware.

[tyVonic]

I might need to try this out!

[beardedchimp]

tyVonicgamez eredeti hozzászólása:

I might need to try this out! :tgrin:

It can be a bit fiddly to sort it out but it should be quite a bit easier now that the code needed is now in the mainline kernel.
Make sure you are using a very recent kernel and check that your motherboard supports IOMMU before having a go.

[Construct]

beardedchimp eredeti hozzászólása:

Yeah I'm running a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 and a gtx 760 which both work fine with IOMMU passthrough.

I'm guessing in the future this capability will be built into much more hardware.

What hypervisor are you using, ESX KVM. I currently have an AMD 7750 working in pass through mode on ESX 5.5 but i was not aware that any nvidia cards worked for iommu passthrough.

[beardedchimp]

Yeah I'm using KVM+qemu.

8350fx
760 gtx guest
some old ati card for host
16GB ram, 8GB host, 8GB guest

I pass through an entire hard drive /dev/sda to the guest. Interestingly I can boot windows directly off the hard drive or boot it as a VM through qemu.

My main problem at the minute is that I blacklist the nvidia modules so that the linux kernel doesn't touch the 760 and have ati opengl packages installed. But I want to run linux only when the game I want to play runs on linux but I don't have an easy way to switch over to the 760 card when I want to.

[Dalingrin]

I'm waiting for a beta invite to do just this. I used Xen VGA passthrough in the past with a lot of success. Being able to stream from VM Windows->Linux would be great as it would make the setup that much easier to use.

[sPOiDar]

Wait, people here are saying they've got nvidia cards working in pass-through with KVM??

[leeps]

I'm getting in on this thread, as the setup OP describes is exactly what I had in mind when opting for a descrete GPU. Since invites have apparently been happening about 5 hours ago, did you happen to get one, @beardedchimp?

[beardedchimp]

@leeps No, no invite so far unfortunately. If/when I get one I'll report back on trying it out.

@sPOiDar I've had KVM+760gtx working since August so it's been ok for quite a while.

[leeps]

Too bad, wish I could give mine away to you, the streaming is currently not working for me at all so I can't actually use it :/

[beardedchimp]

That's kind sentiment, thanks.