[vfio-users] passthrough VGA for widespread use?

[Jonathan Scruggs]

For keyboard and mouse, grab the patches in this mailing list that pass
through your host keyboard and mouse as a standard PS/2 device. You press
both CTRL keys to switch between host and guest. Works very well. You also
have full BIOS control of the guest and Windows UAC pop-ups can be clicked
on where as synergy gets blocked by those prompts.
On 29 Feb 2016 17:44, "Will Marler" <will at wmarler.com> wrote:

> a) I've never had Host or Guest crash problems. I have had problems with
> programs crashing in the guest with nebulous errors (or no errors) that
> seem related to graphics. They are reproducible, but not reliably so, and I
> have never tried to verify if those crashes exist on baremetal.
>
> d) Synergy works great for simple functions (when you need keyboard &
> 2-button mouse). In my experience it is not a good solution for games, as
> some games will interpret the mouse inputs weirldy (small physical mouse
> movements resulting in HUGE cursor movements), and the full spectrum of
> buttons doesn't get translated through.
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 1:02 AM, Rokas Kupstys <rokups at zoho.com> wrote:
>
>> b) VM even if qemu runs as root is still more secure than running
>> software in your own session. More things need to be broken to get to the
>> host with virtualisation in place.
>>
>> c) virt-manager can do almost all whats needed. Might need to edit xmls
>> by hand to switch it to uefi though. Or to add few flags not supported by
>> virt-manager, but as far as device assignment goes virt-manager does handle
>> it.
>>
>>
>> On 2016.02.26 23:09, Muted Bytes wrote:
>>
>> From my experience:
>>
>> I would consider usage stable for an average user, but I'm not sure about
>> set-up for a non-technical user.
>>
>> a) In my specific case, I am forced to use Windows because a lot of
>> simulation and computational tools are only available on that platform, but
>> I chose to operate in a VM rather than baremetal. As a result, I have both
>> memory and cpu intensive simulations running in the guest for days at a
>> time, and idle for weeks/months (shutdown only for host maintenance etc).
>> Have never had guest or host crash or freeze (even through guest restarts).
>>
>> b) I cannot provide comment, I am also running qemu as root. I intend to
>> look at how to move away from root execution of qemu but haven't yet
>> (virtsh makes this easier/possible from what I've read but haven't looked
>> in detail).
>>
>> c) I am also still using qemu from command-line so cannot comment, but I
>> have been watching progression of virtsh and virt-manager. I think it
>> already is at/getting to that point.
>>
>> d) I am using synergy to switch between screens/share kb and mouse with
>> guest. In my case, if the mouse is left on guest side, the guest can lock
>> but synergy prevents the host from locking. The mouse needs to be on host
>> side for me. Also, my guest and host lock independently, so I'm not sure if
>> there is a way to synchronize this.
>> Copy/paste generally works well with text in both directions, however
>> there seem to be some issues with more recent versions of synergy upstream
>> that makes the server portion to hang/crash that seems to be related to the
>> copy buffer (though I'm not 100% sure this is the cause). I haven't
>> encountered this in a while, so it has been intermittent in my case. One
>> good thing about synergy is that you can set it up so that scroll lock key
>> will lock the mouse/kb to one side (guest or host) if you plan to work or
>> game in that environment for a long session, and don't want the mouse to
>> accidentally switch context on the screen edge/boundary. This also makes
>> fullscreen and FPS games playable in the guest without the mouse going nuts
>> from losing relative position information.
>> On Feb 25, 2016 22:59, "Daniel Pocock" <daniel at pocock.pro> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Is a passthrough VGA configuration currently considered stable and
>>> secure for widespread use, for example, where non-technical users can
>>> work productively with applications running this way in an office
>>> environment?
>>>
>>> Some specific things come to mind:
>>>
>>> a) crashes: I've seen crashes mentioned in a few discussions, but are
>>> there many people running it for days and weeks at a time without
>>> crashes?  Are such issues specific to particular hardware and can they
>>> be avoided by using hardware that is preferred/more heavily tested by
>>> the developers?
>>>
>>> b) security: in my testing so far, I just run the qemu command as root.
>>>  To what extent can the use of root privileges be avoided?  I realize a
>>> VM is never 100% secure compared to a normal user session.
>>>
>>> c) control: some of the blogs and wikis mention that tools like
>>> virt-manager and virt-install don't fully cope with passthrough VGA
>>> configuration, is that still up to date?  Can the user start and manage
>>> the VM using some GUI from their X desktop on their host display?
>>>
>>> d) interaction between VM and host desktop: when the user locks the host
>>> display (screensaver), can this also lock the VM's passthrough display,
>>> or the user will always need to lock both?  How well does something like
>>> Synergy work across the displays, especially for things like
>>> cut-and-paste?
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> vfio-users mailing list
>>> vfio-users at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users
>>>
>>
>>
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