Setting Up for Linux Desktops

Table Of Contents
Procedure
1 Power off the virtual machine. and log in to the RHEL 6.6 guest operating system as a local user
configured with sudo rights.
2 In vSphere Web Client, select the virtual machine and, under the VM Hardware tab, click Edit Settings.
3 In the New device menu, select PCI Device.
4 Click Add and select the PCI device from the drop-down menu.
5 Click Reserve all memory and click OK.
You must reserve all virtual machine memory to enable the GPU to support vDGA.
6 Power on the virtual machine and open vSphere console to connect to the machine.
7 Verify that the NVIDIA GRID device is passed through to the virtual machine.
Open a terminal window and run the following command:
lspci | grep NVIDIA
The XX:00.0 VGA-compatible controller is displayed. For example:
NVIDIA Corporation GK104GL [GRID K2]
Install the NVIDIA Display Driver
To install the NVIDIA display driver, you must disable the default NVIDIA driver, download the NVIDIA
display drivers, and configure the PCI device on the virtual machine.
Prerequisites
n
For an NVIDIA GRID vGPU configuration, verify that you downloaded the vGPU software package
from the NVIDIA download site, uncompressed the package, and have the Linux Display Driver (a
package component) ready. See “Install the VIB for the NVIDIA Graphics Card on the ESXi Host,” on
page 27.
Also verify that a shared PCI device was added to the virtual machine. See “Configure a Shared PCI
Device for vGPU on the Linux Virtual Machine,” on page 29
n
For a vDGA configuration, verify that the PCI device was added to the RHEL 6.6 virtual machine. See
“Add a vDGA Pass-Through Device to a RHEL 6.6 Virtual Machine,” on page 33.
Procedure
1 Disable and blacklist the default NVIDIA Nouveau driver.
a Edit the grub.conf file.
For RHEL 6.6, the file is /boot/grub/grub.conf. For RHEL 7.1, the file is /etc/default/grub.conf.
RHEL Version Command
6.6
sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
7.1
sudo vi /etc/default/grub.conf
b Add the rdblacklist=nouveau line at the end of the kernel options.
c Edit the blacklist.conf file.
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
d Add the following line anywhere in the blacklist.conf file.
blacklist nouveau
Setting Up Horizon 7 for Linux Desktops
34 VMware, Inc.