general/other Virtualisation host for my desktop needs, wondering about its feasability.

zeekno

zeekno

The idea is to only have necessary management tools on the host and virtualise multiple systems, some of them graphical. Guests and host would need to share the GPU and display (have it somehow assigned to them when requested? I don't suppose most systems like having PCI devices yanked out from under them...). I'm imagining switching between guests like between ttyvs (some kind of virtual KVM switch?).
Proper accelleration would be nice of course, but navi24 isn't in -CURRENT yet, so vesa is fine for the time being.

Is this at all realistic? I'm somewhat out of my depth, but that's the point ;)
 
zeekno said:
Guests and host would need to share the GPU and display (have it somehow assigned to them when requested?
Click to expand...
It doesn't work that way. Guests get a virtual graphics adapter. While you could certainly pass-through a card to a VM, the host itself won't be able to use it anymore.
 
Ok, every system needs a dedicated GPU to drive a physical display. Can they run headless and output software-rendered graphics via VNC? So make one guest that has the GPU and displays all the others, and host administration happens some other way?

The point is to be able to futz around with desktop setups within the comforts of ZFS.
 
Hmm, I'd rather not touch the host beyond what's needed until I'm comfortable with snapshotting and boot environments. Learning many things simultaneously, I want a base that's just there, you know?

Is it possible to attach the GPU to a VM while it is running and reattach it to the host when it isn't?

Thank you for your advice.
 
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