Thinkpad P1 G2 External monitor

[jblain]

Hello,

I have a fresh installation of Proxmox V6 running on a new Thinkpad P1 G2 machine. It is performing extremely well except for one fundamental problem :

HDMI external monitor do not seem to be detected at all. This machine is listed as having NVIDIA gpu. Here is the info I have :

lspci | grep ' VGA ' | cut -d" " -f 1 | xargs -i lspci -v -s {}
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Lenovo UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 163
Memory at 6040000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at 4000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 4000
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1fb9 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 229f
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
Memory at ed000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 3000
Expansion ROM at ee080000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau

I know that the open source 'nouveau' drivers are trying to stay up to date with NVIDIA but in this case they do not seem to really work. Can I go ahead and install proprietary drivers from NVIDIA in proxmox instead ? Has anyone succeeded in getting external monitors working on this particular platform ?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

 

[aaron]

Can I go ahead and install proprietary drivers from NVIDIA in proxmox instead ?

You can try.

Has anyone succeeded in getting external monitors working on this particular platform ?

Doesn't seem to be the case since no one answered until now :/

May I ask what your use case for an external Monitor is?

 

[jblain]

I am using a pretty powerfull laptop with 32 gig of memory and 6 cores 12 threads capabilities as a software development platform. Proxmox is my base os. I install it, create my personnal account on it, install gnome, login and then use firefox on 127.0.0.1 to access the proxmox web page.

I can then create my VM development environments and access them trough the web novnc consoles. I went ahead and was able to install the NVIDIA propriatery drivers (after a bit of a struggle). I can now plug into my nice Dell wide hires curved monitor to get more desktop realestate.

Such a setup is absolutely great for development :

1- I have instant access to various os
2- I can snapshot any/all of them before I attempt making any changes to them
3- I can very easily backup all my VMs and restore them on another proxmox server if I want
so I can switch PCs very easily and fast (because proxmox installation is a fast and simple process)
4- Using this model I have built up a very nice fully virtualized development environment made up of a virtual network of VMs

I am almost were I want to be but I am still struggling with a few issues :

- My vms have spice displays and I use the novnc web plugin to access the desktops. Regardless of the amount of memory I configure for spice, the maximum resolution I can get is 2560 x 1600 which is still below the capabilities of my wide screen. Is this 2560x1600 limit absolute with spice display and the novnc plugin ?

- I cannot get sound on any of my vms (linux, windows and/or mac). I configure them with spie audio but they all remain mute even tough sound work fine in my proxmox gnome desktop. I am baffled by this one...

Any help will b appreciated. If I can get these last two issues resolved I will have what I consider to be the best development platform available !!

Regards

 

[aaron]

- My vms have spice displays and I use the novnc web plugin to access the desktops. Regardless of the amount of memory I configure for spice, the maximum resolution I can get is 2560 x 1600 which is still below the capabilities of my wide screen. Is this 2560x1600 limit absolute with spice display and the novnc plugin ?

- I cannot get sound on any of my vms (linux, windows and/or mac). I configure them with spie audio but they all remain mute even tough sound work fine in my proxmox gnome desktop. I am baffled by this one...

Use the spice remote viewer. Part of the package virt-viewer and start the session from the GUI. If you set the Display of the VM to Spice and click on the Console button it should download the config file which you need to open with remote viewer.

 

[jblain]

I have tried this approach but have yet to make it work.

My development VM are part of a virtual network (10.10.10./24) on my proxmox laptop that sits behind a PFSense VM acting as that network firewall and gateway. The virt-viewer runs on my proxmox native GUI (on a 172.16.0.x/24 network) and therefore it cannot directly reach the VMs behind PFSense. The NOVNC plugin supplied with proxmox can, but it does not seem able to go to the full resolution of my screen (3440x1440) ??!!

 

[aaron]

Audio via an audio device added through the Proxmox VE GUI will only work with Spice.
I am not sure how high the resolution can go via noVNC.

Might be that the GPU for the VM needs more memory which can be adjusted in the hardware panel of the VM.

If you open the Spice config file in a text editor, that you download when starting a Spice console, you will see that it does not connect to your VM but to your Proxmox VE host.

On my workstation it looks like this:

proxy=http://localhost:3128

What exactly is not working? Opening a Spice console will prompt you with a file download that can then be opened with Remote Viewer. What needs to be considered is that the file is only valid for a limited time.

If you haven't seen it yet there is a Wiki page with all kinds of infos regarding Spice: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/SPICE

 

[jblain]

Thank you Aaron for your help, I am stumped. Not quite sure I am doing exactly what you are doing ??

All my vms are configured with both spice display and spice sound card (AC97)

I access all my vms using the console option in the proxmox host web page.

I am never asked about a file to download when I open the console (is it done in the background by the Proxmox administration web page?) . It just shows me the console view in the console panel.

My browser is the latest version of Firefox esr

I have increased the Spice display memory up to 64 gig but it does not get me increased resolution options vs the default 32 gig. At 128 gig it just seems to hang and never displays anything in the panel.

Although the console panel to the VMs work fine, I can never get any sound or higher resolution than 1920x1080

On the VM,
in the sound settings applet, I get this device : Analog Output - 82801AA AC'97 Audio Controller (QEMU Virtual Machine)
In the Device-Dislay applet the monitor shows up as "Unknown display"

Regards, have a nice day

 

[jblain]

Ok I have figured out my resolution problem...

Resolution on my host nvidia driver was actuay reduced and the Spice drivers were limited by that. Now it works great.

But still no progress on the spice sound issue

 

[aaron]

64MB for the Spice device should be plenty. All it needs is to store the frame buffer for the VM.

What OS is your guest using? I am guessing Windows? In that case, you need to install the Spice drivers and guest agent to have copy&paste and automatic resolution changes, as explained in the wiki page I linked to in my previous post. The spice-guest tools should be the easiest option at the moment. https://www.spice-space.org/download.html

Why are you using the AC-97? Do you have a really old Windows version? The ich9 or just ich device should work in any modern Windows.

To start the Spice console click on the drop-down part of the Console button in the top right after selecting the VM. You should have noVNC, Spice and xterm.js as options with xterm.js greyed out.