[vfio-users] passthrough VGA for widespread use?

[Muted Bytes]

>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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