At one point I had KVM with GPU passthrough running in Arch Linux. I have since moved away from it back to ProxMox. Here are my notes I jotted down when I did this in Arch. Sorry these are just rough notes, I didn’t end up using Arch for long enough to turn this into a polished article.

pacman -Sy qemu netctl ovmf virt-manager

When creating VM, make sure chipset is Q35

CPU model host-passthrough (write it in)

Create VirtIO SCSI controller and attach drives to it

NIC device model: virtio

—- networking —-

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bridge_with_netctl

Copy /etc/netctl/examples/bridge to /etc/netctl/bridge

/etc/netctl/bridge

Description="Example Bridge connection"
Interface=br0
Connection=bridge
BindsToInterfaces=(enp4s0)
IP=dhcp

#Optional - give your system another IP for host-only networking
ExecUpPost="ip addr add 192.168.2.1/24 dev br0"

sudo netctl reenable bridge
sudo netctl restart bridge

In the VM add another network interface, also assign to br0. Manually specify IP in guest VM to match subnet specified above in ExecUpPost

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF

Allow UEFI bios: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/libvirt#UEFI_Support

sudo vim /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf

/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf

nvram = [
    "/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd:/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd"
]

sudo systemctl restart libvirtd

Edit VM hardware:

CLI: sudo virsh edit <vm name>

GUI: double click on VM, then click second icon fnom the left (little i bubble)  Add GPU this way

Nvidia GPU: need to do x otherwise code 43

<features>
	<hyperv>
		...
		<vendor_id state='on' value='whatever'/>
		...
	</hyperv>
	...
	<kvm>
	<hidden state='on'/>
	</kvm>
</features>

Hot add CD:

sudo virsh attach-disk <VM_NAME> <ISO LOCATION>  hdb –type cdrom

Add second NIC: https://jamielinux.com/docs/libvirt-networking-handbook/bridged-network.html

sudo virsh edit win10

<interface type="bridge">
   <source bridge="br1"/>
</interface>

CPU configuration

Current Allocation 16

Topology / manually set CPU topology

1 socket, 16 cores, 1 thread

<cputune>
<vcpupin vcpu=’0′ cpuset=’16’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’1′ cpuset=’17’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’2′ cpuset=’18’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’3′ cpuset=’19’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’4′ cpuset=’20’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’5′ cpuset=’21’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’6′ cpuset=’22’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’7′ cpuset=’23’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’8′ cpuset=’24’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’9′ cpuset=’25’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’10’ cpuset=’26’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’11’ cpuset=’27’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’12’ cpuset=’28’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’13’ cpuset=’29’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’14’ cpuset=’30’/>
<vcpupin vcpu=’15’ cpuset=’31’/>
</cputune>

Running Windows 10 on Linux using KVM with VGA Passthrough

--machine q35 \
--host-device 4b:00.0 --host-device 4b:00.1 \

https://medium.com/@calerogers/gpu-virtualization-with-kvm-qemu-63ca98a6a172

add usb ports. Doesn’t work if nothing’s in the port?

virsh edit win10

<hostdev mode=’subsystem’ type=’usb’ managed=’yes’>
<source>
<address bus=’3′ device=’2’/>
</source>
<address type=’usb’ bus=’0′ port=’2’/>
</hostdev>

Remove Tablet input device to get 4th USB passthrough option

Troubleshooting

internal error: Unknown PCI header type '127'

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/trouble-passing-though-an-rx-580-to-an-ubuntu-desktop-vm/123376/3

Threadripper PCI Reset bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7gp1z7/threadripper_kvm_gpu_passthru_testers_needed/

Error 43:

<features>
	<hyperv>
		...
		<vendor_id state='on' value='whatever'/>
		...
	</hyperv>
	...
	<kvm>
	<hidden state='on'/>
	</kvm>
</features>

Audio cuts out whenever microphone is used

I had a very odd issue where all sound disappeared in my Windows VM if the microphone was used. Even simply opening up audio properties and going to the Recording tab triggered this issue. Disabling / re-enabled Special Effects for the playback device brought it back until the microphone was accessed again.

I’m using USB sound card passed through to the VM for audio. It stems from the VM’s USB controller. When I had it set to USB3 the issue would occur. When set to USB2 the issue went away. Bizarre.