After dual-booting windows with linux on my laptop for a while, the continued bad state of the nvidia driver on linux, and too many issues to go into with windows (Microsoft making default settings to use my internet upload to send updates to other computers should be called out), I am beginning to wonder if using PCI pasthrough to run windows in a VM on my laptop is possible with the optimus setup of my graphics card. I would use looking glass to be able to display the output of the VM, since other methods would defeat the point of using a passed through graphics card.
If anyone can help with my questions below to find out if this is possible, that would be brilliant.
Laptop Specs
- Quanta NL8B appears to be the chassis model, laptop was a custom order
- i7 4720HQ
- 8GB RAM
- Intel HD 4600
- NVIDIA GTX 970M
- 120GB mSATA SSD
- 525GB SATA Crucial MX300
- Both the windows 10 and linux (currently ubuntu for working optimus setup, but broken due to updates and drivers) installs are on the 120GB SSD, linux can be moved to the 525GB drive to pass through a dedicated drive if required.
Main Questions
What I think I need to know to find out if I should try this is:
- Should I be able to pass through the NVIDIA GPU to the guest VM, with the host using the Intel GPU?
- Is there a way to configure looking glass setup from windows native before it is moved to guest, so that I have a chance of getting a display output from the passed through card?
- What sort of drive configuration would be recommended by those with successful passthrough setups with the available storage I have?
- Will the windows install remain usable on the native hardware after installing looking glass if I have problems with Linux or looking glass display output?
- Is the HD 4600 GPU working well with the current looking glass client?
- Is there a Linux distro and DE that should cause the least trouble with a setup such as this on the Intel GPU?
Please ask me for any more info that would be needed to answer any of the above.
Almost guaranteed this won’t work. You might be able to pass it through, but the way it’s wired, you will not be able to get output onto the display or to any of the ports. This means you won’t really be able to do the initial configuration.
Edit: thinking about it a different way, this might work. Ill elaborate when I’m on a desktop.
Forgot to include the lspci output.
lspci output
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev d5)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev d5)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM87 Express LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM204M [GeForce GTX 970M] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
04:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
05:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5227 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
Tried some things today and appear to have managed to pass through my graphics card to a windows VM while running the spice server using one of the default video devices. However, in the windows VM I have been unable to install the NVIDIA driver, getting an error message that no device was found.