[0.7 (now 158$) XMR BOUNTY] Single VM with NVIDIA in HVM+PVH without nvidia modes

User Support
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1

I’m offering a bounty of 0.7 XMR for a solution to run a standalone VM that can work seamlessly in both HVM and PVH virtualization modes with NVIDIA drivers.

Current situation

I have a standalone VM with:

  • Installed akmod-nvidia-open driver (preferred for modern GPUs per NVIDIA documentation)
  • Installed xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda package
  • This guide is better now Salt: automating NVIDIA GPU passthrough: fedora 41 for use Nvidia driver on hvm
  • Working nvidia-smi and other GPU-dependent tools in HVM mode

The problem

While the VM can boot in both HVM and PVH modes after NVIDIA driver installation, in PVH mode the graphics subsystem fails completely. This means:

  • No GUI applications will launch (browsers, file managers, terminals)
  • I cannot use the same VM in both modes without issues

Required solution

I need a method that allows:

  • A single standalone VM that works with NVIDIA drivers in both modes
  • Ability to simply switch between HVM and PVH via Qubes Manager
  • When in PVH mode, preferably using the kernel from dom0 (not pvgrub2-pvh mode or “none”)
  • Fully functional graphics in both virtualization modes
  • Prefer VM os – fedora-41-xfce (good if will work on fedora 42)

Implementation notes

  • I’ve discovered that dmidecode can be used within the VM to detect the virtualization mode before starting the graphics subsystem
  • I’m open to ANY method for switching between modes within the VM
  • Creating multiple full root filesystem disks and switching between them is NOT considered a valid solution if both disks must store complete copies of the root

Has anyone found a way to make this work? Any guidance or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

2

PVH doesn’t support passthrough, there should be a warning in the devices tab in the qube settings.

3

I apologize, I probably forgot to mention it. GPU is not required in PVH mode. Without all PCI devices, it should work as well as with HVM GPU. PVH PCI Passthrough has not yet been supported by XEN, it is not required to solve this problem within this bounty.

It is necessary to make this way: HVM mode, GPU is turned on. I open the terminal, NVIDIA-SNI and everything related to Nvidia GPU work there.
I turn off VM, delete all PCI devices from VM, change hvm to PVH mode and turn on for example Chrome. Chrome turns on and works, there is a window

Installing nvidia-akmod (or nvidia-akmod-open) now broke Xorg on pvh mode