KVM virtualizaiton results in odd colors, low screen resolution

eveningsky339 · 10-15-2010, 10:13 AM

I am running Debian testing, Ubuntu 10.10, and openSUSE 11.3 in KVM. I manage the virtual machines with virt-manager.

Ubuntu runs flawlessly, but Debian + KDE and openSUSE have issues. Screen resolution cannot be increased beyond 800x600, and the color palette is off-- what is white is black, and so on.

Is there a way to tweak KVM and improve these issues?

correnos · 10-15-2010, 10:26 AM

I have experienced this issue as well. What CPU/graphics card are you using? I have a Core i7 and an nvidia graphics card w. proprietary drivers.

eveningsky339 · 10-15-2010, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by correnos

I have experienced this issue as well. What CPU/graphics card are you using? I have a Core i7 and an nvidia graphics card w. proprietary drivers.

It's an Intel Centrino (dual-core) CPU and NVIDIA 9600M GS w/ proprietary drivers enabled.

correnos · 10-15-2010, 11:09 PM

Unfortunately the only non-nvidia system I have available is a laptop that does not support hardware virtualization, so I have no way to test whether the problem is the nvidia card or not.

eveningsky339 · 10-18-2010, 08:24 PM

Disabled the the proprietary driver and ran the KVM session with nouveau. Same problem.

correnos · 10-18-2010, 11:09 PM

Ah. The problem might then be with Intel's vt-d. It seems to be the next most likely culprit. If you have an AMD machine at your disposal, you could try it. Also, you could attempt to use alternate Xorg drivers such as fbdev (or similar).

eveningsky339 · 10-24-2010, 10:14 AM

According to synaptic, fbdev is already installed.

What about changing the hypervisor from KVM to Xen?

eveningsky339 · 10-25-2010, 06:10 PM

No change when switching hypervisor from KVM to QEMU.

Off to find a new xorg driver.