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GPU passthrough tutorial

This tutorial will guide you through how to set up GPU passthrough in virtualised environments (VM/LXCs) in order to enable hardware acceleration.

Proxmox - Jellyfin installed as (unpriviledged) LXC​

To use the iGPU for hardware acceleration, the following devices need to be passed through to the LXC:

  • /dev/dri/card0 - owned by group video
  • /dev/dri/renderD128 - owned by group render

To use the dGPU, use card1 and renderD129 instead

Hardware passthrough requires mapping the GIDs to the correct group ownership.

  • the GID for group video is 44
  • the GID for group render varies (based on your LXC template distro) - e.g. debian 104, ubuntu 106 etc.
note
  • Proxmox unpriviledged LXCs achieve isolation/security by mapping the guest GID/UIDs to different values from the host.
  • Most issues with hardware passthrough in unpriviledged LXC is due to incorrect GID mapping.

You can find the GIDs using the LXC console/command line

To find out your distros group render GID, type:

cat /etc/group | grep render

it should output something like:

render:x:104:jellyfin

this shows

  • the render group GID is 104
  • the jellyfin user is in group render

Web GUI method​

  1. Find out the GID for your video and render groups

  2. In Proxmox Web GUI (x.x.x.x:8006), go to: LXC -> Resources -> Add -> Device Passthrough

  3. Add the /dev/dri/card0 device

  • tick the Advanced checkbox to map GID to 44 (for group video)
  1. Add the /dev/dri/renderD128 device
  • tick the Advanced checkbox to map GID to your render group GID (for group render)
  1. Reboot your LXC and continue with instructions for your GPU architecture