[vfio-users] Looking for recommendations for screen-switching

[Nick S]

Monitor source selection menu is the cheapest option and also the least
convenient. The most convenient option is a KVM switch but then you would
have to deal with passing one of its USB ports to the VM while keeping the
other one on host and a good KVM will cost you several hundred bucks. The
way I am using it:
1) Cheap HDMI switcher (i.e. something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/TBS%C2%AE2083-Intelligent-Switcher-Adapter-Splitter/product-reviews/B00M6I8K2E).
It allows me to switch the cards without fumbling with the monitor menu.
2) I keep the emulated VGA as a second adapter on my virtual machines. For
Windows 7 it keeps a window on the desktop that I can use to grab or
release focus for keyboard and mouse. This way I don't have to deal with
any USB passthrough - only the GPU is passed to the VM.

On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 7:14 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan <poc at usb.ve> wrote:

> I have VFIO passthrough working with a Windows 10 VM, running on Fedora
> 25. Currently I have two cables running to my single monitor (one HDMI
> and one DVI), so switching back and forth means toggling a monitor
> setting. This does work, but is a bit clunky.
>
> BTW the mouse and keyboard also switch back and forth (this slightly
> surprised me but I'm not going to question it :-)
>
> I thought I could make this simpler by exchanging the DVI cable for
> another HDMI cable, both cables going into an HDMI switch and hence to
> the HDMI port on the monitor, with the idea of toggling back and forth.
> However this doesn't entirely work. I suspect that the switch powers
> off the input it's not using and this confuses Windows.
>
> Most of the discussion I've seen recommends Synergy, a software
> KB/mouse switcher, however this explicitly does not support video
> switching, i.e. it assumes you have a separate monitor for each machine
> (real or virtual), which is not the case here.
>
> The other option seems to be a physical KVM switch, but before shelling
> out more money I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this. What do you
> do to support a single monitor?
>
> poc
>
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