How to improve the performance of spice vms used only on localhost

[hansdegoede]

Hi all,

Spice by default is intended for use over the network, and as such uses image compression, which is not really useful when only using a vm locally. So if you've vms which you only use locally you may want to turn the image-compression off. To do this, do: "virsh edit <vm-name>", then locate the
section starting with "<graphics", ie in my case this is a single line section looking like this:

   <graphics type='spice' autoport='yes'/>

To disable image-compression, add the following 2 lines too this section, changing it to a multi-line section if necessary:

     <image compression='auto_glz'/>  
      <streaming mode='filter'/>       

So in my example this changes the graphics section into:

   <graphics type='spice' autoport='yes'>
      <image compression='off'/>  
      <streaming mode='off'/>      
    </graphics>

Note that the "/>" at the and of the line starting with "<graphics" has been changed into just a ">", since this is a multi-line section now!

Then shut off the vm, power it up again and enjoy your faster local graphics.