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I have a Debian Squeeze KVM hypervisor running a server guest VM and a Desktop guest OS VM. Is it possible for the Desktop guest to send it's display to monitor directly attatched to the computer?

An answer from another forum suggested using Xen, a second video card and pci.hideback. This setup would have the hypervisor ignore the second videocard, and the guest use it to send the display to a monitor.

Another suggestion was to use VNC locally on the VM desktop and loopback to the Virtual machine console sessions.

I'd like to avoid using VNC as the server itself will be running screen sharing software, and that way may lie madness.

Has anyone got this working? I'm open to other ways of running a server and a desktop OS on the same physical machine, but this way seems the most secure.

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  • Don't do it.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 21:28
  • Good advice, though a little difficult to grasp. A better answer would point to Xen vga passthru and say "possible, but limited to hardware with IOMMU support.
    – user150266
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 22:06
  • Or vt-d for intel.
    – user150266
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 23:23

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I don't think this is possible - the KVM hypervisor provides a virtual console for guests, it doesn't give guests access to control the real console. If it did that, you would lose control of the hypervisor. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, however.

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  • That fits with answers I've gotten elsewhere. It seems Xen's VGA passthrough using a second video card is the way to go. Looks like it is under development. I couldn't find any useful information about pci.hideback.
    – user150266
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 21:25
  • KVM assigning a second video card to a guest with vt-d is possible too. Doesn't look like it's under development, or as advanced as Xen.
    – user150266
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 23:27

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