Arch Linux

DrBepis

Member

Registered: 2023-09-07

Posts: 1

issues isolating nvidia GPU for vfio GPU passthrough

Hello,

I am running arch on a Dell alienware 15 r3

CPU: Intel i7-6700HQ (8) @ 3.500GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile
I have integrated intel graphics and and an nvidia card

I have been trying to isolate my GPU and bind the vfio-pci drivers to it as part of the passthrough instructions in the arch wiki, but every time I run

 dmesg | grep -i vfio 

i get nothing.  I have followed the arch wiki and also this tutorial:
https://github.com/vanities/GPU-Passthr … -Windows10

I have ensured IOMMU is enabled, I have tried blacklisting nvidia and nouveau, writing a custom xorg config in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/   , I have double checked the IDs for the nvidia GPU and its audio device and added them to
/etc/modprobe.d/vfio.conf, and have added the necessary modules and modconf in /etc/default/grub

the nvidia drivers always bind to the GPU unless I blacklist them, but that results in the system being unable to boot unless specifying the kernel parameter nomodeset with grub, and even then that hangs on "reached target graphical interface" and i then have to swutch to tty3 to undo my changes and reboot. My question is twofold: How can I get just the vfio-pci driver to bind to the nvidia card so I can use it in  a vm, and how can switch my host OS from using the GPU(what it currently is using) nto the integrated graphics? I apologize if my formatting is poor, this is my first post. Any help is very much appreciated

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 42,878

Re: issues isolating nvidia GPU for vfio GPU passthrough

Get nvidia out of the initramfs (beware the kms hook!) and vfio* in.
However

the nvidia drivers always bind to the GPU unless I blacklist them, but that results in the system being unable to boot unless specifying the kernel parameter nomodeset with grub, and even then that hangs on "reached target graphical interface"

this also sounds a lot like at least your graphical target is configured to use the nvidia GPU (nvidia-settings generate xorg.conf?)

Please post your complete system journal for the boot:

sudo journalctl -b | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

Please post your Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General

Ftr. if you blindly copied and pasted "mkinitcpio -g /boot/linux-custom.img" from the tutorial you "also" followed, that's not gonna work.

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