How to run QEMU/KVM with the GPU on an Optimus laptop

Support Virtualization
1

Hello, I’m trying to run QEMU or KVM (or both, not really sure how any of this works) with the GPU.

I’m on an Optimus laptop (intel CPU + nvidia GPU), which uses the intel iGPU by default, and I normally provide a couple of environment variables to the things I want to run with the nvidia GPU. For example, I run steam with __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME="nvidia" __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus="NVIDIA_only".

Issue is, I have no idea what to run with those variables. I run virt-manager, but running the manager on the GPU is not interesting, I as I want the virtual machines to be run with the GPU.

What could I try ? I imagine I could maybe try to run libvirt with the environment variables, but systemd takes care of that, so I don’t know what I could change for that.

Thanks for any help ^^

2

You may be interested in QEMU/Guest graphics acceleration - ArchWiki.

3

I’ve read through that, with the current configuration I have, I can’t do any of the passthrough or similar methods. I’m using the QXL/Spice method, but it runs on the CPU, not on the GPU. I don’t know how I would run it on the GPU though, where I should put the environment variables I mention.