Proxmox on a notebook + gui console

[TheUnF]

I'm very new to proxmox and wonder if I can break a barrier that virtualbox and vmware could not yet: deploy the OS on a notebook and enable it's console to act as a virtualization gui also enabling switch to a running VM, use it in fullscreen as it was the main notebook OS and then easly switch to other vm's console keeping all vms required for an specific project running running in parallel.

I could do it with hyper-v but with a huge loss of resources for the gui ... and that's too much M$ for me

I7 with 64Gbs and SSD is an optimun system for it ... and currently I have to run it solo and use crossover lan cable and a lower resourced laptop just to connect to VMs ... crap.

 

[PavloPub]

Anyone, any luck with the original question (console GUI)?

I see it's from 2017, but, maybe, somebody has answered it on practice)

 

[LnxBil]

PCIe passthrough is the only option to do that in PVE (or any other hypervisor without an OS in between). If you want fullscreen with acceleration, use VirtualBox.

 

[Rares]

If I got this correctly, you could just install the ISO on your laptop and since it's Debian you can just run this to get the graphical interface

sudo apt install lxde task-lxde-desktop -y

From here you can open firefox and dive into the Proxmox web interface or use SPICE.

On some laptops you can have 2 graphic cards, it would be interesting to see if the powerful one can be shared to a VM. Keep in mind that you cannot share the same graphic card between 2 VMs.

 

[esi_y]

If I got this correctly, you could just install the ISO on your laptop and since it's Debian you can just run this to get the graphical interface

sudo apt install lxde task-lxde-desktop -y

From here you can open firefox and dive into the Proxmox web interface or use SPICE.

On some laptops you can have 2 graphic cards, it would be interesting to see if the powerful one can be shared to a VM. Keep in mind that you cannot share the same graphic card between 2 VMs.

I originally wondered about realistic use case for the OP's question. If he meant just what you inferred, he might as well install normal Debian (probably even Ubuntu) and apt install PVE suite on top of Linux with desktop environment back then already. But maybe I am missing something...

 

[LnxBil]

From here you can open firefox and dive into the Proxmox web interface or use SPICE.

SPICE is still not on-par with PCIe passthrough and in most of them, you cannot game.

 

[esi_y]

in most of them, you cannot game.

I see!

 

[PavloPub]

I originally wondered about realistic use case for the OP's question. If he meant just what you inferred, he might as well install normal Debian (probably even Ubuntu) and apt install PVE suite on top of Linux with desktop environment back then already. But maybe I am missing something...

though I'm not an OP, I specifically would like to keep "host" as clean/stable as possible (no X server, no mesa drvs, nothing - just the hypervisor) and use VM with desktop env of my choise (win/linux/whatever) or an LXC container for specific purposes.
I have two cases - laptop and Raspberry Pi 4 8GB and haven't yet checked if Proxmox suits me.
For RPi (with two of it's HDMIs) I have few VMs, one with RetroPie, another with StepMania and/or StarCraft.

 

[esi_y]

though I'm not an OP, I specifically would like to keep "host" as clean/stable as possible (no X server, no mesa drvs, nothing - just the hypervisor) and use VM with desktop env of my choise (win/linux/whatever) or an LXC container for specific purposes.
I have two cases - laptop and Raspberry Pi 4 8GB and haven't yet checked if Proxmox suits me.
For RPi (with two of it's HDMIs) I have few VMs, one with RetroPie, another with StepMania and/or StarCraft.

So I know little about Pimox [1] setups, so leave it there. I also don't have experience with PCI passthrough (it's all headless) for this scenario, but I wonder ... if you install PVE on bare metal and within have a VM with all you want (Gnome, Firefox, etc.) and you PCI passthrough it ... but then you need to passthrough also USB. And essentially you only get to connect to your PVE over SSH or Web GUI. Troubleshooting would be fun ... has anyone tested this passthrough scenarios?

[1] https://raspberrytips.com/proxmox-on-raspberry-pi/

 

[PavloPub]

So I know little about Pimox [1] setups, so leave it there. I also don't have experience with PCI passthrough (it's all headless) for this scenario, but I wonder ... if you install PVE on bare metal and within have a VM with all you want (Gnome, Firefox, etc.) and you PCI passthrough it ... but then you need to passthrough also USB. And essentially you only get to connect to your PVE over SSH or Web GUI. Troubleshooting would be fun ... has anyone tested this passthrough scenarios?

[1] https://raspberrytips.com/proxmox-on-raspberry-pi/

Not sure if Pimox is a good choice here (I've monitored it some time back, wasn't looking "reliable" enough), so I will be taking my chances with "plain" one https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-proxmox/

 

[esi_y]

@PavloPub

Spoiler: off-topic

Not sure if Pimox is a good choice here (I've monitored it some time back, wasn't looking "reliable" enough), so I will be taking my chances with "plain" one https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-proxmox/

I wonder if it's worth the hassle, as in it's essentially open source, but one is installing from blackbox repos or even ISOs. If I were doing this, I would want to compile it myself and be sure only the ported parts are different.

For RPi specifically, what's wrong with Ubuntu's LXD out of the box?

 

[Folke]

If I got this correctly, you could just install the ISO on your laptop and since it's Debian you can just run this to get the graphical interface

Exactly, and also what most developers run at Proxmox

On some laptops you can have 2 graphic cards, it would be interesting to see if the powerful one can be shared to a VM. Keep in mind that you cannot share the same graphic card between 2 VMs.

SPICE is still not on-par with PCIe passthrough and in most of them, you cannot game.

A couple of years back, I had some luck with Looking Glass [0] to use a Windows VM at pretty much no latency for gaming and some Windows only software that was required by a lecture. At that time, I was on archlinux and directly used kvm, but there should be nothing to prevent you from doing the same with pve today. This setup still also relies on PCI passthrough and a second graphics card, but you don't need an extra monitor, keyboard, mouse or dualboot.

[0] https://looking-glass.io/

 

[PavloPub]

I wonder if it's worth the hassle, as in it's essentially open source, but one is installing from blackbox repos or even ISOs. If I were doing this, I would want to compile it myself and be sure only the ported parts are different.

Spoiler: offtop 1

pimox is an "interim" layer here, as it's not under umbrella of commercial-driven support, I would like to avoid anything that looks or may soon look like abandonware. Proxmox itself is not an issue for me, as in my case, it's not worth the hassle to compile it myself

For RPi specifically, what's wrong with Ubuntu's LXD out of the box?

Spoiler: offtop 2

Ubuntu at the moment of my last check was not the best system for minimal host - they've dropped support of minimal images some time back and (kinda expected) don't support cloud-init scripts for non-cloud installations (as opposed to debian with it's cfg). I've actually tried LXD on Ubuntu with X pass-through, but at that time even with advises from linuxcontainers forum (at that time they were still commenting vms on their forum) I wasn't able to move x/mesa/audio into container/vm completely, though I've achieved some progress. Disclaimer - I'm rather on the "user" side of linux ppl, and, having my "non-standard" demands not backed by enough knowledge, I may be missing some basic points here

 

[esi_y]

@PavloPub

Spoiler: off-topic

pimox is an "interim" layer here, as it's not under umbrella of commercial-driven support, I would like to avoid anything that looks or may soon look like abandonware. Proxmox itself is not an issue for me, as in my case, it's not worth the hassle to compile it myself

I suspect they are "equally bad" in this respect. I have no hands-on experience with either, but if you install something from an unknown repo or ISO, it does not help there's a transparent sources [1] for it, which look alright.

https://github.com/jiangcuo/Proxmox-Port

Ubuntu at the moment of my last check was not the best system for minimal host - they've dropped support of minimal images some time back and (kinda expected) don't support cloud-init scripts for non-cloud installations (as opposed to debian with it's cfg).

I meant this for the RPi: https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi

But I think LXD installs as a snap ... oh yeah ... elsewhere too.

I've actually tried LXD on Ubuntu with X pass-through, but at that time even with advises from linuxcontainers forum (at that time they were still commenting vms on their forum) I wasn't able to move x/mesa/audio into container/vm completely, though I've achieved some progress. Disclaimer - I'm rather on the "user" side of linux ppl, and, having my "non-standard" demands not backed by enough knowledge, I may be missing some basic points here

That's alright, I have no experience with passthrough on LXD, but it worked quite nice as a solution for RPi long before I even considered PVE. I still think of PVE mostly like a QEMU thing that added up LXCs ... thanks to Ubuntu's kernels as well.

 

[LnxBil]

has anyone tested this passthrough scenarios?

Years ago, we wanted to try a Laptop scenario in a headless fashion, but the hardware would not allow it and it constantly froze. We had a time limit on this, so we stopped after a week of hard work.

Later, I tested it in a workstation with passthrough of various GPUs, the newer the better. I also passthroughed FC-HBA, Ethernet and various USB-3 controllers. In the end, it was heavily dependend on the used hardware. Generally, the more expensive the hardware was, the better was the "success chance". I build my first MacOS VM with only passthrough, yet it did not work constantly and broke from kernel-update to kernel-update and in the end, I stopped using pcie passthrough completely. It was just not stable enough for my needs.

Passthrough for LX(C) containers is not worth the name, it's just bind-mounting and allowing stuff and mostly works out-of-the-box, if the PVE host provides the driver. I have CUDA running and can do some ML stuff in a container on the GPU, yet no "real" graphics output. Nowadays, I'm running with MacOS on my daily driver and virtualized PVE on it (and of course running almost everywhere else where a hypervisor is needed).