[unRAID 6.2.4] Issues passing video through to Linux guest? (SOLVED, I think..)

[kagayaki]

Hello!

 

I've been using unRAID for a little under a month so far with mostly good results. I wanted to upgrade my desktop CPU, and I also wanted a better long term storage solution that was at least a little better than "get a new harddrive and hope it doesn't die." I had seen some youtube videos talking about using unRAID to do some wacky gaming setups, so it seemed like I could kill two birds with one stone!

 

To that end, my Windows 10 VM was working relatively flawlessly within my first week, so no complaints there. I was able to pass through my GTX960 as well as some USB controllers so I could have some hotplug in my VM. I used Linux a lot as a teenager, so I guess I enjoy messing around with Linux as a desktop periodically, but I don't seem to be having similar success passing through my videocard to Linux.

 

Here's some info:

• Hardware: http://pastebin.com/raw/qy76GLci
  
• Gentoo cfg: http://pastebin.com/raw/crsxF90M
  
• Windows cfg (for reference): http://pastebin.com/raw/DNM8y15S
  

 

My first attempt was with Fedora earlier in the week since I heard they are shipping with Wayland-enabled GNOME by default now. I started the install  with the VNC Viewer for the Graphics card. The install went fine, as did my first boot which I did with VNC still set as my graphics card. I shutdown both my Windows and Linux VMs, and then set up the Linux VM to pass through the hardware that is also passed through to my Windows machine. To be clear, my Windows VM isn't on when trying to run Linux with this hardware.

 

Upon restarting my Linux VM, it appeared to be working. The GRUB menu came up on my monitor, and I was able to use my keyboard which was plugged into one of the USB controllers I had passed through. IIRC Fedora uses some kind of framebuffer for the boot process, so you don't really see messages as they come up.. but the screen goes blank a few seconds after it started booting.

 

A few days ago I decided to try Gentoo again, which is the Linux distro I have the most experience with anyway. Again, the install process (which at a quick glance is similar to Arch for those who haven't used Gentoo yet but might be familiar with Linux in general) went through relatively fine with VNC as the graphics card. The install process includes configuring and compiling a kernel, and I opted to use genkernel instead of configuring it manually. Genkernel essentially compiles in nearly everything as modules to try to limit the guessing at what driver to compile in for what hardware. I didn't realize they didn't include the virtio drivers, but after I realized that it was easy to fix that.

 

The result was basically the same as Fedora once I fixed that hiccup. The GRUB menu would pop up, I could select which entry to boot into, and it would start going through the bootup process. A few seconds after the process starts the screen goes blank. Based on the last message before it goes blank, it appears to go blank when it was populating the udev files in /dev. It said something about processing uevents which I think has something to do with udev if I remember correctly.

 

It's (understandably) directly related to the videocard. I was able to pass through the aforementioned USB controllers while keeping the graphic card as VNC. I had a VNC session open on my laptop and I could control the VM with the keyboard/mouse plugged into my unRAID server.

 

I haven't been able to find anything particularly useful trying to google a solution for this (not related to Windows), so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

 

Some TLDR bullet points:

• Windows 10 works fine with nVidia and USB passthrough
  
• Linux goes blank shortly after boot starts in both Fedora and Gentoo
  
• Boots fine with USB passed through but VNC graphics
  

 

Another edit:

 

As an experiment, I tried having my Linux VM have both VNC and my GeForce as a graphics card. It looks like the graphics card isn't causing the system to lock up.. the graphics just go distorted shortly after booting for some reason. I'll have to see if there's something I need to compile into my kernl (that wasn't compiled into the Fedora kernel) that's required for the terminal to work properly.

 

In the meantime I'm going to get Xorg compiled to see if that works on my videocard.

[kagayaki]

So I'm currently writing this reply in Gentoo running Firefox in Fluxbox (and watching youtube on my second monitor), so it seems like whatever was going wrong in my previous post are no longer issues..

 

I'm not entirely certain what the issue actually was. I deleted my VM a few times and tried different distroes with relatively similar results, although I started having issues with the other connected hardware. I think the issue I was describing earlier had something to do with framebuffer settings in the kernel not working properly with my videocard. I ended up trying Fedora again and was able to get into the desktop after the install by using some kernel parameters to use the very basic terminal. Of course, nVidia drivers aren't installed and I got stuck into a boot loop when trying to install them. Oh well.

 

Earlier today I tried gentoo again, although this time I went the systemd route instead of openrc. After the base install and some fighting with kernel config to get all the virtio guest kernel options I needed enabled, I was able to boot into the Linux with my videocard passed through to the VM. Apparently I hadn't compiled certain options into my kernel in order for my keyboard/mouse to be recognized. I decided to give genkernel another shot. It worked this time.

 

So not really an issue with unRAID specifically, but just some issues with getting the right options enabled for the kernel, but it looks like I got it figured out.