[TUTORIAL] PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE 8 : Debian 12 (with Cloud-init)

[asded]

This article is the third in a series of five articles dealing with the installation and configuration of VMs (Linux, Windows, macOS and BSD) in PCI Passthrough on Proxmox VE 8.

• Part 0-4 PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE Installation and Setup (Part. 00x04)
• Part 1-4 PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE: Windows 10.11 ( Part.01x04)
• Part 2-4 PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE: Debian 12 (Part. 02x04)
• Part 3-4 PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE: OpenBSD 7.3 (Part. 03x04)
• Part 4-4 PCI/GPU Passthrough on Proxmox VE: macOS (Part. 04x04 )

Well, after seeing how to configure our first Windows VMs, let's now move on to Linux (Debian 12). For this installation we will use cloud-init, still in the same logic as before (with our installations of Windows 10 and 11), that is to say the facilitation of the deployment of our future templates.

Creating our Debian VM

We start by creating our VM:

 qm create 106 \
--name deb-106\
--agent 1\
--memory 8192\
--bios ovmf\
--sockets 1 --cores 4\
--cpu host\
--net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0\
--scsihw virtio-scsi-single\
--boot order='scsi0'\
--efidisk0 local-lvm:0\
--ide0 local-lvm:cloudinit\
--machine q35\
--hostpci0 0000:01:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1 \
--serial0 socket\
--vga serial0\
--usb0 046d:c08b,usb3=1\
--usb1 04ca:007d,usb3=1

A few details on the QEMU configuration applied:

• ide0 local-btrfs:cloudinit This is our Cloud-init disk.
• boot order=‘scsi0’ In the boot order, I defined our future Debian image, in first position (we will see later how to add it to this config).
• hostpci0 0000:01:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1 the PCI slot of our graphics card.
• vga serial0 and serial0 socket set default display to serial console output (default configuration for cloud init).
• usb0 and usb0: correspond to the USB id's of my keyboard and my mouse, which I retrieved from the hypervisor with ”lsusb”.

• 
  
  Importing the Debian image for our VM
  
  Let's get our Debian cloud image, it's the "generic" we need:
  
  

  wget -P /mnt/pve/PVE1/template/iso/ https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/bookworm/latest/debian-12-generic-amd64.qcow2

  We add our disk image in our QEMU configuration
  
  

  qm set 106 --scsi0 local-lvm:0,import-from=/mnt/pve/PVE1/template/iso/debian-12-generic-amd64.qcow2

  We take the opportunity to resize our disk, just to have enough space to install all the packages:
  
  

  qm resize 106 scsi0 50G

  Customizing our Debian image
  
  Now we can move on to editing our configuration file, to adapt our Debian image.
  
  Indeed, the image does not have a GUI, moreover, it also does not have the necessary AMD drivers for my RX 580. To do this, we will first have to add, new entries to apt sources “contrib, non-free and non-free-firmware” we will then define the additional packages to install.
  
  In my case I will store my config file in "/mnt/pve/PVE1/snippets", but that's because I have an NFS mount point to my NAS. In your case the path should be “/var/lib/vz/snippets”.
  
  

  cat << EOF >> /mnt/pve/PVE1/snippets/deb12.yaml
  #cloud-config
  
  write_files:
  - path: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/non-free-contrib.list
  happy: |
  deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  deb http://security.debian.org/bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  deb-src http://security.debian.org/bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  
  package_update: true
  package_upgrade: true
  
  packages:
  - qemu-guest-agent
  - vim
  - net-tools
  - htop
  -screen
  -tree
  - gnome-core
  - xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
  - firmware-amd-graphics
  - libgl1-mesa-dri
  - libglx-mesa0
  - mesa-vulkan-drivers
  -xserver-xorg-video-all
  
  runcmd:
  - systemctl enable qemu-guest-agent
  - systemctl start qemu-guest-agent
  - mkdir -p /etc/skel/Documents
  - mkdir -p /etc/skel/Images
  - mkdir -p /etc/skel/Videos
  - mkdir -p /etc/skel/Downloads
  - mkdir -p /etc/skel/Skeles
  - echo 'SKEL=/etc/skel' >> /etc/adduser.conf
  
  bootcmd:
  -userdel -r -f debian
  EOF

  In addition to our configuration file, we will additionally define the type of IP assignment (dhcp in my case since I want to make desktop use of it, a static IP does not interest me).
  
  

  qm set 106 --ipconfig0 ip=dhcp
  qm set 106 --cicustom "vendor=PVE1:snippets/deb12.yaml"

  In your case, for the last command, use (default snippets path) instead:
  
  

  qm set 106 --cicustom "vendor=local:snippets/deb12.yaml"

  First setup
  
  We launch the installation/configuration of the VM:
  
  

  qm start 106

  At the first start our VM will install all the necessary packages, you can check this from the proxmox console. Once you have control of the console again, you can directly shut down the VM and delete the obsolete entries in the QEMU configuration.
  
  

  qm shutdown 106
  qm set 106 --vga none
  qm set 106 --delete serial0

  Conversion to template and deployment
  
  It's almost finished, we now move on to converting our freshly configured VM into a template:
  
  

  qm template 106

  Now all you have to do is clone your Debian template, and define your user.
  
  

  qm clone 106 107 --full 1 --name deb-107

  Setting cloud-init parameters:
  
  

  qm set 107 --ciuser USER --cipassword PASSWORD

  You can also go through the proxmox web interface to configure Cloud-init. Click on the new virtual machine you created, go to the Cloud-Init tab and then pass your settings and that's it! You can start your new virtual machine.
  
  
  
  My original Article (FR) : GPU passtrought sous Proxmox VE - Debian 12 (Part. 02x04)