In the Linux kernel’s subsystem, "overlay" refers to a hardware overlay plane—a separate display pipeline that can scan out video frames without compositing. The ovm abbreviation has been spotted in the intel_overlay.c source code.
| Scenario | Environment | Typical Symptom | |----------|-------------|----------------| | | QEMU/KVM + VFIO | Guest display freezes, then recovers; error in host dmesg | | Using Intel GVT-g (Shared GPU) | KVM with i915-GVTg_V5_8 | VM fails to boot with "Failed to set domain page" | | Running Wayland compositor inside VM | Weston, Gnome on VM with VirtIO-GPU | Random artifacts, then session restart | | Unprivileged LXC container with GPU access | LXC + lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow | Containerized OpenGL app crashes, kernel splat | | Intel Ice Lake / Tiger Lake mobile CPUs | Laptops with hybrid graphics | Battery drain + constant i915ovmfrom upd retries | i915ovmfrom upd
OVMF is a project to enable UEFI support for virtual machines. In the context of Intel GPU passthrough: In the Linux kernel’s subsystem, "overlay" refers to
In recent kernels (5.15+), the i915 driver has gained robust support for and overlay planes —features heavily used when a VM is passed through an Intel GPU or when using the VirtIO-GPU for guest acceleration. In the context of Intel GPU passthrough: In