Goal

If you have an arch base Linux system running in a virtual machine and want to access it using the spice / qxl interface, it may be useful to install the proper driver to have higher resolutions avaiblabe.

Packages

The driver can be found in package prebuild within the official arch repositories.

pacman -S xf86-video-qxl

The agend for the spice virtual display is available from the AUR repositories. I use yaourt to install the package. This might be dangerous if you are not careful. Just read the PKGBUILD and other files provided by the package. If there is nothing suspicious, you may proceed and install it.

yaourt -S spice-vdagent-git

X11 configuration

Finally the X-server needs to be configured to use the newly installed qxl driver. I use the command sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-qxl.conf to start editing. You may use the following lines as content of the file.

Section "Device"
Identifier "qxl"
Driver "qxl"
Option "ENABLE_SURFACES" "False"
EndSection

After rebooting (or restarting X), you should be able to select higher resolutions for your display. This makes using the machine much more comfortable.