[Almost Solved] QEmu and Windows 10 Guest Resize display

lyallp · Last edited by lyallp on Wed Nov 29, 2023 4:09 am; edited 3 times in total

Hi,
I am fiddling with migrating from VirtualBox to QEmu.
I have converted 2 existing Win10 VirtualBox machines to QEmu and they boot just fine.
I connect using the 'spice' client rather than using 'virt-manager' after having setup the display server as 'spice' rather than 'vnc'
I have installed spice-guest-tools in the Windows 10 Guest
I have uninstalled Oracle Guest Additions
Everything seems to be working just swimmingly, except, if I increase the size of the guest window, the guest does not change resolution.
It will scale (as in stretch and compress) but it does not automatically change resolution of the guest to match the window size, like the VirtualBox Guest still does.
I can use the Windows 10 Guest Display resolution controls to change the resolution, however.
My 'video' is 'Virtio'
My 'display' is spice server, but I have not got OpenGL enabled because my QEMU binary does not support 3d acceleration.
My physical Video card is an nVidia with the proprietary nvidia driver installed.
I am running current (as at 18-Nov-2023) versions of all software.
Happy to provide additional info, if requested.

Actual software installed is listed below, and I followed the Gentoo wiki with regard to Kernel settings for qemu, re-built and re-booted.

I do still have VirtualBox installed, along with it's modules, if that makes any difference.

Oh, and I use FluxBox as my window manager.

flexibeast · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 11:21 am Post subject:

i might be misunderstanding you, but do you get the result you want if you add

lyallp · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 11:50 am Post subject:

I am somewhat confused.

I have established services 'virtlogd', 'libvirtd' and 'libvirt-guests' as being auto started at my default runlevel (I use OpenRC, not systemd).

In order to start qemu, I simply run /usr/bin/virt-manager.

I use this to start/stop my guests.

I use spicy --host localhost --port 5900 to connect to the guests.

It is my understanding that having the above services will auto stop/start the VM's if I leave them running and I reboot the host.

I don't understand where this apparent command line option is to be used.
_________________
...Lyall

sMueggli · Guru Joined: 03 Sep 2022 Posts: 374

Do you have app-emulation/open-vm-tools installed in the guest system?

lyallp · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 11:56 am Post subject:

I have spice-guest-tools installed.
I will investigate open-vm-tools....

...quick investigation...

...I am using QEmu, not VMWare.... the way I read it, this an open source implementation of VMWare tools...

How is that relevant to QEmu?
_________________
...Lyall

sMueggli · Guru Joined: 03 Sep 2022 Posts: 374

Yes, my fault. I was thinking that open-vm-tools are "open-virtual-machine-tools" (originally developed by and for vmware, but adopted by Qemu). But indeed it looks like the tools are used only for vmware VMs.

lyallp · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 1:31 pm Post subject:

Just a point to note, the exact same VM, takes 1 minute 22 to get to the login screen under VirtualBox from power on.

Under QEmu, it's 20 seconds.

Huge difference, considering the exact same underlying hardware, including the same Host disk.
_________________
...Lyall

papu · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 4:52 pm Post subject:

...
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"~amd64" --cpu 7700 non-x --DDR5 2x16GB 6000MHz --gpu RX 470

flexibeast · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 11:43 pm Post subject:

lyallp · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 11:55 pm Post subject:

I think I would put the parameters you identified in virt-manager once I build qemu with the required support.

I suspect I did not have the nouveau use flag set in my media-libs/mesa to be the root cause of my problem.

For my use case, virt-manager is exactly what I want, I could not be bothered setting up scripts to start the virtuals (of which I only have 2) when virt-manager seems to do the job quite nicely.

Ok, I have to interact with with virt-manager to actually start the Virtuals up but once they are running, I can use spice to view their console and, though I have not tested it yet, if I re-boot the host, the virt related services will stop/start the VM's for me.

At this point, I am still uncertain how the spice guest modules work and how they are updated, I guess they are similar to VirtualBox Guest Additions but how they are updated for new versions I have yet to discover, short of manually downloading and installing.

I will let you know how things go.
_________________
...Lyall

lyallp · Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 12:12 am Post subject:

Not having much luck at this early stage, a bit more research I think.

I have display Spice, video Virtio, I have spice Listen type None, and OpenGL enabled with a path to what appears to be my nVidia card selected.

However, EGL_NOT_INITIALIZED.

Will keep fiddling, might even try setting up a run script....
_________________
...Lyall

flexibeast · Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 12:25 am Post subject:

lyallp · Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2023 10:49 pm Post subject:

I re-converted the VM from VirtualBox to QEmu
I installed SPICE guest tools latest
I have not uninstalled Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions 7.0.12

However, my guest resizes when I re-size the host window, which is all I am interested in.
_________________
...Lyall

flexibeast · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2023 12:38 am Post subject:

This has been marked '[Solved]'; could you please add a comment describing how you solved it, for people who might have this problem in the future?

lyallp · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2023 4:31 am Post subject:

See the entry above.
_________________
...Lyall