Installation on other distributions

The Official Documentation contains installation instructions for Debian-based distributions and should work fine on derivatives. The following are supplemental guides for other distributions, which do not work using the Debian instructions.

Fedora 35+

Installing Dependencies for Client Build

dnf install cmake gcc gcc-c++ libglvnd-devel fontconfig-devel spice-protocol make nettle-devel \
            pkgconf-pkg-config binutils-devel libXi-devel libXinerama-devel libXcursor-devel \
            libXpresent-devel libxkbcommon-x11-devel wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel \
            libXScrnSaver-devel libXrandr-devel dejavu-sans-mono-fonts

For wayland support you will also need the following packages

dnf install libdecor-devel

For audio support in Bleeding Edge, the following packages should also be installed:

PipeWire users:

dnf install pipewire-devel libsamplerate-devel

PulseAudio users:

dnf install pulseaudio-libs-devel libsamplerate-devel

Installing Additional Dependencies for Kernel Module Build

dnf install dkms kernel-devel kernel-headers

OpenSuSE Leap 15.0+

Installing Dependencies

zypper install binutils-devel make cmake fontconfig-devel libSDL2-devel libSDL2_ttf-devel spice-protocol-devel libX11-devel libnettle-devel wayland-protocols-devel \
               libconfig-devel libXi-devel libXss-devel libwayland-egl-devel nettle

Tumbleweed

For Tumbleweed this should do the trick:

sudo zypper in binutils-devel clang cmake dejavu-fonts fontconfig-devel gcc gcc-c++ glibc-locale libdecor-devel libglvnd-devel libnettle-devel libpulse-devel libsamplerate-devel libSDL2-devel libSDL2_ttf-devel libvulkan1 libwayland-egl-devel libxkbcommon-devel libXpresent-devel libXrandr-devel libXScrnSaver-devel libXss-devel make Mesa-libGLESv3-devel pipewire-devel pkgconf-pkg-config pkgconfig spice-protocol-devel vulkan wayland-devel zlib-devel-static

Arch Linux / Manjaro

Installing Dependencies for Client Build

pacman -Syu cmake gcc libgl libegl fontconfig spice-protocol make nettle pkgconf binutils \
            libxi libxinerama libxss libxcursor libxpresent libxkbcommon wayland-protocols \
            ttf-dejavu libsamplerate

Installing Additional Dependencies for Kernel Module Build

pacman -Syu dkms linux-headers

Void Linux

Installing Dependencies

xbps-install -Syu binutils-devel cmake freefont-ttf fontconfig-devel SDL2-devel SDL2_ttf-devel spice-protocol libX11-devel libXpresent-devel libXinerama-devel nettle-devel \
                  gcc make pkg-config

Gentoo

Installing Dependencies

First set up the necessary USE flags if needed:

echo "media-libs/libsdl2 gles2" >> /etc/portage/package.use/libsdl2
echo "media-libs/nettle gmp" >> /etc/portage/package.use/nettle

Then fetch the packages:

emerge sys-devel/binutils dev-util/cmake media-fonts/freefonts media-libs/libsdl2 media-libs/sdl2-ttf app-emulation/spice-protocol \
       media-libs/fontconfig dev-libs/nettle media-libs/libsamplerate \
       media-libs/glu

This list can also be placed into a setfile in /etc/portage/sets/ so that they can be updated with

emerge @setfile

Proxmox

Prerequisites

• A working Proxmox install on a computer with 2 GPU's (Tested with 7.1-6)
• A Windows VM with GPU pass-through working (Tested with Win 10)
• A Linux VM with GPU pass-through working (Tested With Ubuntu 21.10)
• Proxmox Host Installed and running on the Windows VM

During Proxmox 7 lifecycle they shipped a newer OVMF firmware than tested, and breaks kvmfr module. Currently the workaround is to use an older version of it:

apt install pve-edk2-firmware=3.20220526-1
apt-mark hold pve-edk2-firmware

For Proxmox 8, the current pve-edk2-firmware version 3.20230228-4 is tested to work with kvmfr 0.0.9 with Linux 6.4.3 in Linux VM. If you used the workaround mentioned above, you can revert it by:

apt-mark unhold pve-edk2-firmware
apt full-upgrade

Windows VM setup

Using the Proxmox GUI, Set the Windows VM Display to "none"

Then in a shell to the Proxmox host edit the Windows VM Config:

nano /etc/pve/qemu-server/**YOUR-WINDOWS-VM-ID**.conf

And add the following arguments to the args: line. If the args: line doesn't exist, create it at the top of the config.

-device ivshmem-plain,memdev=ivshmem,bus=pcie.0 -object memory-backend-file,id=ivshmem,share=on,mem-path=/dev/shm/looking-glass,size=32M -device virtio-mouse-pci -device virtio-keyboard-pci -spice 'addr=0.0.0.0,port=[spice port],disable-ticketing=on' -device virtio-serial-pci -chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent -device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0

The -device virtio-mouse-pci -device virtio-keyboard-pci are not strictly necessary but should reduce input latency.

[spice port] should be replaced by a tcp port not in use.

Boot the Windows VM

Linux VM setup

In a shell to the Proxmox host edit the Linux VM Config:

nano /etc/pve/qemu-server/**YOUR-LINUX-VM-ID**.conf

And add the arguments to the args: line. If the args: line doesn't exist, create it at the top of the config.

-device ivshmem-plain,memdev=ivshmem,bus=pcie.0 -object memory-backend-file,id=ivshmem,share=on,mem-path=/dev/shm/looking-glass,size=32M

Then boot the Linux VM, and download the latest Looking-glass source from https://looking-glass.io/downloads (Tested with version B5.0.1)

Follow the Official Looking-glass documentation on how to Build Looking-Glass Client - https://looking-glass.io/docs/B5.0.1/build/#building

Follow the Official Looking-glass documentation on how to install the kernel module - https://looking-glass.io/docs/B5.0.1/module/

Running Looking-Glass

1. Make sure both VMs are running.
2. On the Linux VM, open a terminal and cd to the looking glass client build folder
3. Run Looking-Glass with:

 ./looking-glass-client -f /dev/kvmfr0 -c **Your_Proxmox_Host_IP** -p **spice port specified**

Using vGPU merged driver to run Looking Glass on Proxmox Host

This currently only work for Windows guest, as Looking Glass Linux Host is immature at the moment.

You can simplify the guest set up by replacing the IVSHMEM settings in args with the following line:

ivshmem: size=32

This will create a 32M IVSHMEM file under /dev/shm/pve-shm-**VMID**. You will need to point app:shmFile to this file when launching LG client.

If you want to run a Linux VM with GPU passthrough, but also being able to LG into this Windows guest in addition to from Proxmox host, you can add the following line in VM config file:

ivshmem: size=32,name=**WINDOWS-VMID**

This will override Proxmox to open /dev/shm/pve-shm-**name** instead, and since the default for **name** is **VMID**, set that to your Windows's VMID does the trick.

Additionally you can use UNIX socket for SPICE instead of opening another port on Proxmox. This file cannot be accessed by Linux guest so only do this if you don't need access Looking Glass from another VM.

-spice unix=on,addr=/run/lg**YOUR-WINDOWS-VM-ID**.socket,disable-ticketing=on

However, those 2 files will be created as root-owned. You will need to create a hook script to set the correct permissions for them (/etc/tmpfile.d was having reliability issue on my machine for IVSHMEM file, and it cannot override socket file's ownership at all):

# 3rd party script, created by the community, not part of Looking Glass project!
# Assuming you have set up a storage named `local-btrfs` and is mounted at `/var/lib/pve/local-btrfs`
wget https://github.com/MakiseKurisu/single-node-homelab/raw/c6daee9c242571977a0af9088c4d7360dd309685/ansible/proxmox-init/pve-helper -O /var/lib/pve/local-btrfs/snippets/pve-helper
chmod +x /var/lib/pve/local-btrfs/snippets/pve-helper
qm set $VMID --hookscript=local-btrfs:snippets/pve-helper
echo "#lg-chown user" >> /etc/pve/qemu-server/$VMID.conf