[vfio-users] passthrough VGA for widespread use?

[Will Marler]

Oh, good point, that is an option too (although I personally I stay away
from patching)

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 1:29 PM, Jonathan Scruggs <j.scruggs at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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?
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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