Gnome Boxes - "Devices And Shares"

English Virtualization
1

Non-tech non-professional home user question:

When I am running any distro via Gnome Boxes, I routinely will go to to Properties>Devices and Shares and attempt to activate my USB peripherals from the listed choices.

When I do so with Tumbleweed Gnome none of said peripherals will activate. Each brings the message:

Redirection of USB device *“usb peripheral name” *for *distroname.iso *failed."

What can I do to get this feature to work? Thanks for any help you might provide.

2

Hi
Is spice-gtk installed? I see an old issue (2018) here about the same error: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/39129

3

Thanks for the response. I didn’t find a solution with your suggestions.

4

Hi
If you see it available in other distributions, then it could be a bug… You can create via: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE

Post back the report number :wink:

5

I started bug report # 1189026.

Thanks.

6

Under the “Edit XML” tab in the Properties area of Gnome Boxes, I found the following reference to redirection. I’m not a sophisticate here, but I wondered if anyone sees anything fishy here that might give a clue about why USB’s are failing to redirect. Thanks for any help.

<redirdev bus=“usb” type=“spicevmc”>
<alias name=“redir0”/>
<address type=“usb” bus=“0” port=“2”/>
</redirdev>
<redirdev bus=“usb” type=“spicevmc”>
<alias name=“redir1”/>
<address type=“usb” bus=“0” port=“3”/>
</redirdev>
<redirdev bus=“usb” type=“spicevmc”>
<alias name=“redir2”/>
<address type=“usb” bus=“0” port=“4”/>
</redirdev>
<redirdev bus=“usb” type=“spicevmc”>
<alias name=“redir3”/>
<address type=“usb” bus=“0” port=“5”/>
</redirdev>

7

this bug goes all the way back to openSUSE 13.1 !!!

Volunteers or not, this is pretty pitiful.

At that time the complaint was ignored. In the age of Leap 15.3 it is still broken and still being ignored.

What gives??

8

Is there a setting in the firewall I can make? Maybe that’s it.

9

When I opened Gnome_Boxes via the terminal, the following came up:

*(gnome-boxes:7060): Boxes-WARNING *: 14:14:47.077: libvirt-machine.vala:284:
Failed to connection to system libvirt: Unable to open qemu+unix:///system:
Failed to connect socket to ‘/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock-ro’: No such file or directory

Does that help any?

When I read a post out the web somewhere with a similar error message, it said to make sure I was a user for *libvirt (and qemu for good measure). *I added myself as such. Then rebooted. No effect. Still doesn’t work.

10

Hi
Is libvirtd running?


systemctl status libvirtd
11

jiw@localhost:~> systemctl status libvirtd
○ libvirtd.service - Virtualization daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/libvirtd.service; disabled; vendor preset: d>
Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ○ libvirtd-admin.socket
○ libvirtd-ro.socket
○ libvirtd.socket
Docs: man:libvirtd(8)
https://libvirt.org

12

Hi
So you need to enable it (to start on boot if you want) and start it…


systemctl start libvirtd
systemctl status libvirtd
systemctl enable libvirtd

I normally just start if/when needed…

13

Success!

To get Gnome-Boxes to be able to enable usb peripherals, open Yast. Go to Security and Users > User and Group Management > Edit tab (under user name) > Details. Add oneself (check box) to the libvirt, kvm, and qemu groups.

Thank much to several people and web pages that helped me solve this challenging mystery! As usual I learned a lot more than just this final step in the process. That’s what makes Linux great. The struggling to learn, discovering new knowledge and skills along the way, and ending in figuring out a solution.

14

Bug 1189026 marked resolved. Additional Notes attached.