Reverse gpu passsthrough on new laptop

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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Hi Wendel and enthusiasts,

I’m trying to have my “normal productive windows 10 setup” from boot with my Intel integrated hd630 as default gpu but am trying to passsthrough my (unused) gtx 1050 to the Linux guest VM. (I don’t play games therefore the reverse passthrough situation)

Reason I feel graphics are slow on my linux VM with shared intel igfx with the host and I need it to run X11 full resolution.

In summary I need :
-Windows 10 host w/ Intel hd630

Linux VM guest w/ Nvidia gtx 1050
Don’t forget this is a laptop so I cant force reverse the (GTX1050 for the host and igfx to the VM ) and I don’t want to boot Linux and run windows off a VM because of my productivity and printing needs…

To boot Linux I use qemu , virtual box or even hyper-v . Don’t mind which

Would that reverse gpu passthrough work, and does the iommu stuff also works from windows10 host?

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Sorry about the messy start of your topic, got marked as spam and had to do a few fixes. Continue on :slight_smile:

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First off, rather than reverse passthrough, most people would say passthrough with a Windows host.

Windows is locked down more than Linux. As far as I know, only hyper-v has the capability to do passthrough on a windows host. It is called direct device assignment and is only available in Windows server(2016 or newer). I am not sure if server essentials would work, but std and datacenter do.

Virtualbox passthrough is only available on Linux hosts, has been marked experimental for years, and not very many people use it.

QEMU is available for Windows hosts, and you can use HAXM with it in place of KVM(for the actual virtualization, QEMU only does emulation), but MS has locked down passthrough on Windows hosts to Hyper-v DDA only.

Windows server is not ideal for a laptop, but workable. You will want to tweak a bunch of settings to make it closer windows 10, like enabling audio, and installing wifi support, and disabling ctrl-alt-delete to get to the login page. The main issue is that there is no Bluetooth support OOTB. You may be able to get Bluetooth working using the Toshiba Bluetooth stack, but that depends on what Bluetooth chipset your laptop has, well if it has one.

If you are a student, you can get server 2016 keys through ms imagine, even if your school does not have a specific web store. Windows server also has a 90 day renewable(5 times) trial period.

Here is the guide on DDA for graphics passthrough.

Even after all that, your laptop might not work for PCI passthrough. If you have a muxed laptop, you might be ok, otherwise, you are in uncharted territory and will probably get stuck.
Guide for GPU passthrough on Linux hosts

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Great insights and thanks for sharing and :pray: to the mods for keeping this thread alive.

I had given up on qemu+HAXM it just hasn’t worked all that well for me in my tests (with qemu-{2,3} + HAXM + Intel Clear Linux ) but Hyper-V always looked fast or even faster than Virtualbox.

WS2016 + hyper-v/DDA + Linux VM = Dream setup , … so If I get it up & running will post some deserved screenshots