Create a Gaming HVM

[deeplow]

@taradiddles

Note: if after this step when you reboot the computer you get stuck in the QubesOS startup that means you are trying to use the GPU you just hide. Check your BIOS options. Also check the cables, BIOS have some GPU priority based on the type of cable. For example, DisplayPort can be favoured over HDMI.

In my case, the bios (Dasharo) doesn’t provide options to prioritize a GPU over another. So what I did was fix the issue from the failed qubes startup and switching to another TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F2). There was an annoying issue that kept switching back to TTY1 but that was fortunately solvable.

To allow me to see the login screen it turns out that X11 crashing was the failure reason (I saw that on lightdm logs).

Making dom0 Xorg work with an Nvidia Graphics Card

I don’t understand why this is even an issue if the GPU is supposedly hidden, but for some reason Xorg tries to accommodate the Nvidia graphics card instead of the intel graphics. I fixed this with a config in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-user.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier "layout"
	Screen 1 "integrated" 0 0
EndSection
	  
Section "Device"
	Identifier "integrated"
	Driver "intel"
EndSection
	  
Section "Screen"
	Identifier "integrated"
	Device "integrated"
EndSection

New problem: No bootable device

Now I’m stuck with an issue where the HVM can’t boot if any PCI-e device is attached. I see some others are also encountering this. I documented this issue in this other thread:

HVM no bootable device after gpu passthrough

Supposedly with the Qubes 4.2 on testing with the latest Xen, the <3.5G issue should be fixed: However, I have that patch but I am still getting a No bootable device. I should also note that this happens with any PCI-e device attached, not just a graphics card. Any ideas?