KVM guest displaying on an attatched monitor

I have a Debian Squeeze KVM hypervisor running a server guest VM and a Desktop guest OS VM. Is it possible for the Desktop guest to send it's display to monitor directly attatched to the computer?

An answer from another forum suggested using Xen, a second video card and pci.hideback. This setup would have the hypervisor ignore the second videocard, and the guest use it to send the display to a monitor.

Another suggestion was to use VNC locally on the VM desktop and loopback to the Virtual machine console sessions.

I'd like to avoid using VNC as the server itself will be running screen sharing software, and that way may lie madness.

Has anyone got this working? I'm open to other ways of running a server and a desktop OS on the same physical machine, but this way seems the most secure.

user150266

Posted 2012-12-19T19:27:07.953

Reputation: 56

Don't do it. – Michael Hampton – 2012-12-19T21:28:24.970

Good advice, though a little difficult to grasp. A better answer would point to Xen vga passthru and say "possible, but limited to hardware with IOMMU support. – user150266 – 2012-12-19T22:06:36.830

Or vt-d for intel. – user150266 – 2012-12-19T23:23:19.237

That fits with answers I've gotten elsewhere. It seems Xen's VGA passthrough using a second video card is the way to go. Looks like it is under development. I couldn't find any useful information about pci.hideback.

– user150266 – 2012-12-19T21:25:38.150

KVM assigning a second video card to a guest with vt-d is possible too. Doesn't look like it's under development, or as advanced as Xen.

– user150266 – 2012-12-19T23:27:59.680

KVM guest displaying on an attatched monitor

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