Proxmox 7 or 8 displaylink USB HDMI passthrough success?

davidng

New Member
Sep 15, 2023
5
1
3
Hi everyone,
I got one of those smaller PC, MoreFine S500+ with CPU 5825U
want to used it as a router and small PC for web browsing.
I have installed proxmox 7.4 or 8.0 , and want to passthrough my displaylink device: WavLink WL-UG3501H to ubuntu 22.04 or 23.10
already set up the usual pcie passthrough mention in the wiki, like
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough

I have document what I have try in
https://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68347
but seems no one was interested in VM in the displaylink forum, so no ones knows the answer.

I was wondering if in this forum, any one successfully passthrough a displaylink USB HDMI to a VM and get video output?
if yes, please let me know, in the VM
1 what kind of OS and version you used
cat /etc/os-release

2 which kernel
uname -rv

3 the displaylink driver version.
sudo dkms status sudo systemctl status displaylink-driver.service /opt/displaylink/DisplayLinkManager -version

4 Wayland or X11
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

thank you so much
 
Hi davidng,

I was also struggling to setup a test environment with HDMI connected to the host and displaying the guest VM.
After a day of try and error I found a very "easy" solution:

You will have to use a certified DisplayLink USB device.

The steps are as follows (on the VM and not on the Host):
apt install wget (if it is not already on your machine anyways)

1.) wget https://www.synaptics.com/sites/default/files/exe_files/2023-08/DisplayLink USB Graphics Software for Ubuntu5.8-EXE.zip (alternatively, you can also use the WebBrowser of your choice and download the driver)
2.) unzip 'DisplayLink USB Graphics Software for Ubuntu5.8-EXE.zip'
3.) chmod 755 displaylink-driver-5.8.0-63.33.run
4.) sudo ./displaylink-driver-5.8.0-63.33.run

The DisplayLink driver does currently not work on GDM as it changes GDM to fall back to X11. But DisplayLink seems to work only with Wayland.
The solution is now to used a different Display Manager in Linux:

5.) apt install sddm
6.) During Login use Wayland! ($XDG_SESSION_TYPE=Wayland)

That's it! No complicated GPU pass through or modifying the host in any way, and you also can hot plug the USB DisplayLink device and attach it on the fly to a different VM!

I hope this helps ;)

Kind Regards,
byteXpression

Web Pages (Download Driver):
https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu
 
Last edited:
Hi @byteXpression
I am on latest update of Proxmox 8.1.3
with a fresh install ubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso
try your above method, did not work.

is it possible show a little more information about
1 what proxmox version
2 what ubuntu version, kernel.
3 which brand and model of displaylink device you have ?

thank you.
 

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