Libvirt, qemu, looking glass and undetected VM tutorial.
my qemu-libvirt, looking-glass setup.
In my case intel iGPU UHD Graphics 630 and dGPU nvidia gtx 1660 ti moblie from lenovo. this setup gives the VM 10 cores, 12GB of ram and dGPU passthough which can give near native performance with small input lag with help of looking glass.
sudo pacman -S qemu virt-manager virt-viewer dnsmasq vde2 bridge-utils openbsd-netcat libguestfs
DONT USE CUSTOM ISOs
win 10 iso
win 11 iso
Enable
[Edit > Preferences > General > Enable XML Editing]
[Edit > Connection Details > Overview > Basic Details > autoconnect]
[Edit > Connection Details > Virtual Networks > default > Autostart > On Boot]
[File > New Virtual Machine]
Step 1 - Skip, click forward
Step 2 - Choose ISO and os you will use, auto sucks
Step 3 - Change memory to your liking and set CPUs to 1
Step 4 - Create virtual disk, you can have multiple or disable storage for VM and passthough 2nd disk if you have one
Step 5 - Change the name to something you will remember for example "win11", and check customize configuration before install
Step 6 - Remove network interface and change CPU topology, dont use all cores and threads, Threads are per core so for example if you are going to use 4 cores and 8 threads set 4 CORES and 2 THREADS
Step 7 - Click begin installation
If everything went fine you should be greeted with new windows VM! You may notice that mouse and keyboard feel slugish but we will repair it later.
Choose windows 10/11 pro, it adds some features you may want to use later and dont lie you will either crack the windows with cmd script or buy the key for 1$ on some site.
After this whole setup you should be greeted with bloated windows 10/11 desktop, i recommend debloating windows before continuing with one of thoese tools; winaero, Chris Titus Tool, Windows10Debloater
Install Cpp Redistributable
And now install Libvirt Drivers
CPU pinning makes that your host pc uses some cores only if it is necessary
use command lscpu -e
if your cpu has more than 1 core and 1 thread you should see list of them all
Example output of i7-9750H
CPU NODE SOCKET CORE L1d:L1i:L2:L3 ONLINE MAXMHZ MINMHZ MHZ
0 0 0 0 0:0:0:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4191.3130
1 0 0 1 1:1:1:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4189.4761
2 0 0 2 2:2:2:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4195.7422
3 0 0 3 3:3:3:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 800.0000
4 0 0 4 4:4:4:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4195.7671
5 0 0 5 5:5:5:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4153.4458
6 0 0 0 0:0:0:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4172.5459
7 0 0 1 1:1:1:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4199.1362
8 0 0 2 2:2:2:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4168.4658
9 0 0 3 3:3:3:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4118.1348
10 0 0 4 4:4:4:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4186.9038
11 0 0 5 5:5:5:0 yes 4500.0000 800.0000 4199.3618
If you can see some "CPUs" share the same "CORE", thats because this cpu has 6 cores and 12 threads.
If you want to do cpu pinning you need to pin the whole core with all threads so in this case if i wanted to pin "CPU 3" i would have to pin the "CPU 9" too.
Right after <vcpu placement='static'>(number of cores)</vcpu> you need to add some lines.
Using the same example as before If i wanted to pin core 3 and core 9 it would look like this.
<cputune>
<vcpupin vcpu='0' cpuset='3'/>
<vcpupin vcpu='1' cpuset='9'/>
</cputune>
vcpu is the core in guest VM and cpuset is core in host pc.
There are many way to setup gpu passthrough, it depends if you have iGPU and dGPU, one GPU or 2 dGPUs, in this case i will only explain the first two.
Step 1 - Install qemu hooks manager
sudo wget 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PassthroughPOST/VFIO-Tools/master/libvirt_hooks/qemu' \
-O /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu
Step 2 - Make directories
sudo mkdir -p /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/
Step 3 - GPU files
Copy My files
change GPU ids in these files using command lspci, that number before your gpu is the only thing you need, copy every one that includes your gpu and replace all dots and colons with underscores.
Paste these files to
revert.sh to /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/
start.sh to /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/
Make them executable
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/revert.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/start.sh
Step 4 - Add GPU in Virtual Machine Manager
Click open on VM, then on the bottom left click Add Hardware and add same pci id as in the step 3
Step 5 - Run VM
Install Drivers for the GPU, if you gpu is mobile you will have to make extra steps.
Step 1 - Install qemu hooks manager
sudo wget 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PassthroughPOST/VFIO-Tools/master/libvirt_hooks/qemu' \
-O /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu
Step 2 - Make directories
sudo mkdir -p /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/
Step 3 - GPU files
Copy My files
change GPU ids in these files using command lspci, that number before your gpu is the only thing you need, copy every one that includes your gpu and replace all dots and colons with underscores.
Paste these files to
revert.sh to /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/
start.sh to /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/
Make them executable
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/release/end/revert.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d/(VM NAME)/prepare/begin/start.sh
Step 4 - Add GPU in Virtual Machine Manager
Click open on VM, then on the bottom left click Add Hardware and add same pci id as in the step 3
Step 5 - Run VM
Install Drivers for the GPU, if you gpu is mobile you will have to make extra steps.
Looking Glass makes VM better to use, less input lag etc.
Looking Glass require 2nd monitor, HDMI or DP dummy plug or Driver that will simulate 2nd monitor
Looking glass has to be same version on host and guest pc otherwise it will not work, i would suggest to download it from aur on host pc and on VM download version B6 from Looking glass site
run command
sudo EDITOR=nvim virsh edit (VM NAME)
and add
<shmem name='looking-glass'>
<model type='ivshmem-plain'/>
<size unit='M'>32</size>
</shmem>
right before
</devices>
change video model to none and delete tablet device
<video>
<model type='none'/>
</video>
sudo nvim /etc/tmpfiles.d/10-looking-glass.conf
and paste this line to this file replacing user with your username
f /dev/shm/looking-glass 0660 user kvm -
and run this command
sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create /etc/tmpfiles.d/10-looking-glass.conf
you can create looking glass config, if you want to make your looking glass always fullscreen or something like that create config file ~/.config/looking-glass/client.ini and use this site
Create new file, using command bellow in directory you will remember, for me its /etc/libvirt/hooks/qemu.d
echo 'U1NEVKEAAAAB9EJPQ0hTAEJYUENTU0RUAQAAAElOVEwYEBkgoA8AFVwuX1NCX1BDSTAGABBMBi5f
U0JfUENJMFuCTwVCQVQwCF9ISUQMQdAMCghfVUlEABQJX1NUQQCkCh8UK19CSUYApBIjDQELcBcL
cBcBC9A5C1gCCywBCjwKPA0ADQANTElPTgANABQSX0JTVACkEgoEAAALcBcL0Dk=' | base64 -d > SSDT1.dat
add this to your VM config
<domain xmlns:qemu="http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0" type="kvm">
...
<qemu:commandline>
<qemu:arg value="-acpitable"/>
<qemu:arg value="file=/path/to/your/SSDT1.dat"/>
</qemu:commandline>
</domain>
i got it from there, it works :)