Ryan El Kochta, Author at The Passthrough POST

CONFIG_HZ: How does it affect KVM?

Ryan El Kochta — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:18:24 +0000

Since the release of version 2.6.13 in August 2005, the Linux kernel has support for adjusting the frequency of the timer interrupt via the CONFIG_HZ compile-time option. This setting can have a considerable impact on overall system latency and throughput in certain scenarios. In this article, its impact on KVM will be explored. See Also: [...]

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Disk Passthrough Explained

Ryan El Kochta — Fri, 18 May 2018 14:46:49 +0000

QEMU supports many different types of virtualized disks. Throughput, latency, and overhead vary greatly depending on the disk type. Here's a rundown of all the options, their benefits, and their drawbacks. IDE/SATA QEMU primarily supports two emulated disk controllers: IDE and SATA. The advantage of emulation is wide guest OS support. The guest sees a [...]

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Linux Desktop Compositors — Performance and Functionality

Ryan El Kochta — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 21:49:27 +0000

Desktop performance on Linux can vary with different environments, window managers, compositors, and graphics drivers. Depending on the driver and environment in use, your desktop's responsiveness and performance can vary wildly. The compositor is among the most vital components for good desktop UX on Linux. Here's a brief rundown of a few of the most [...]

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ZFS Configuration Part 2: ZVols, LZ4, ARC, and ZILs Explained

Ryan El Kochta — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 17:28:04 +0000

In our last article, we touched upon configuration and basic usage of ZFS. We showed ZFS's utility including snapshots, clones, datasets, and much more. ZFS includes many more advanced features, such as ZVols and ARC. This article will attempt to explain their usefulness as well. See Also: ZFS Configuration on Linux – Setup and Basics ZFS [...]

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ZFS Configuration on Linux – Setup and Basics

Ryan El Kochta — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 22:36:38 +0000

Can you think of a time where you forgot to make a backup of a file/folder, and accidentally corrupted or deleted it? Maybe a mistaken command ran 'rm -rf' across your entire music library? Maybe core system files of a virtual machine were corrupted? We all make mistakes, and the sooner you move to ZFS, [...]

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Explaining CSM, efifb=off, and Setting the Boot GPU Manually

Ryan El Kochta — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 21:42:36 +0000

Many factors can influence the success of GPU Passthrough. On some newer systems, notably low and mid-end Ryzen platforms, there's a little extra legwork you'll need to do to get your OS to boot with the correct GPU, and the processes that go into making that happen are somewhat complicated. Need help Building your passthrough [...]

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Fix for Threadripper PCI Passthrough Submitted to Linux Kernel

Ryan El Kochta — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 23:15:30 +0000

AMD's Threadripper platform has proven buggy and problematic for Passthrough VMs. Luckily, Geoffrey McRae, known by his username gnif, recently submitted a fix to the Linux kernel developers for the company's HEDT flagship. When the patch lands downstream, TR will be uniquely poised as a powerful virtualization platform, as the highest-end Threadripper currently available sports [...]

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Meltdown Patch Performance — Benchmarks and Review

Ryan El Kochta — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:08:38 +0000

The computing community is full of concern for the Meltdown vulnerability. Page-Table Isolation is the name of the patch. Many workloads can see a performance hit. How is GPU Passthrough affected? These benchmarks will attempt to show this. An Overview Meltdown is an architectural vulnerability in Intel and certain ARM CPUs. It allows an attacker [...]

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Evdev Passthrough Explained — Cheap, Seamless VM Input

Ryan El Kochta — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 14:50:43 +0000

Input is often the first hurdle presented after getting a passthrough VM up and running. Without Spice or VNC, users often resort to hacks and workarounds to control their virtual machine. Passing through USB devices via evdev has become a popular if badly documented way of handling input. The advantage of evdev is that it [...]

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Using nvidia-xrun for Dynamic Intel + NVIDIA GPU Switching on Linux

Ryan El Kochta — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 17:31:20 +0000

One problem that affects many many GPU passthrough users is the need to permanently bind the host to an iGPU. This can be problematic if you have many games that run on Linux natively. It forces you to boot to a VM to play any graphically demanding games at full speed. With Witko's nvidia-xrun utility, [...]

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