since a couple of months I am using very successfully
XEN Hyperviser 4.10 with Leap 15 together with libvirt
Xen-tools (Virt-Manager, Virsh) provided with the latest
updates.
Now I have to attach some usb-devices (disks and sticks)
to VMs (HVM only) such as Win10, Win7, Ubuntu et al. My
actual information source is SUSE documentation “Virtu-
alization Guide Leap 15”; e.g.: passage 17.6 USB Pass-
Through, pages 169-171.
Both methods, attaching Emulated USB Devices and Paravirtu-
alized PVUSB are well explained in detail. The Documentation
recommends for PVUSB a paravirtualized front-end interface in
the guest VM. An USB back-end interface should come in Leap15
with QEMU by specifying ‘type=qusb’. I tested all methods of
USB passing through, as described, but none of them worked on
my system. Command “xl usb-list VM_W10” in VM0 shows me the
appropriate usbdevice is correctly attached to the guest VM,
but the device is unknown and not at all available in the VM.
I was already looking for downloading PV-USB Front-End drivers
for WIN and Linux on the Xen and SUSE Web-Sites but found none.
Unfortunately the SUSE Docu does not report any sources where to
get such needed PV-USB Front-End drivers.
May I kindly ask for any tips, hints which could solve my
problem? - many thanks in advance.
Generally on the subject of any kind of hardware passthrough,
The official documentation is probably best because this topic is generally on the leading edge of technology so is changing frequently.
Hello,
unfortunately I did’nt get any responses to my
usb-pass-through problem. Probably my question
is not clearly formulated, therefore I’ll put it
another way:
how can I get a correctly attached and passed
through usb-device (usb-disk, usb-stick, usb-
printer etc.) accessible in a XEN-guest-VM?
(Windows, Linux)
Any propositions and suggestions are welcome!
Regards - manfred -
OK, I’ll bite.
Did you not find what you needed in the link in my prior post?
If that didn’t work for you, what issue did you run into?
And, that’s just to enable USB pass-through which I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend.
If your USB storage is visible to the HostOS, then you can configure ordinary virtualized access which probably is more than sufficient for most uses.
it’s been while since I’ve configured a USB printer(I rarely deal with direct attached printers nowadays and prefer network even for homes), in the past I generally configured a network connection to the physical machine (even the HostOS) running a print server for the attached printer.
Remember that when you do a pass-through, the machine(physical or virtual) has monopolistic control over that device so no other machine (physical or virtual) can have access.
Hello TSU,
thank you very much for your quick response. Of
course I compared both newest documentations
(XEN an Suse) chapter ‘XEN Usb-passthrough’ -
I found no differences.
My issue is not how to pass through an usb device,
that’s really well described in the docu. My problem
is after having passed through and attached an usb-
device to a GuestOS, the usb-device is not visible to
the DomU und therefore not accessible. E.G. command
‘xl usb-list VM3_Win10’ shows me the selected usb-
device correctly attached to this VM, however in
VM3_Win10 >administative tools> device manager> USB
this device does not appear and can’t be accessed.
The same issue exists for Linux GuestOs.
Attaching an usb-printer is a minor issue because
another network attached printer is available for
several DomU. More important for me is to get usb-
data devices and an usb-soundcard attached.
Thank you very much TSU for spending your time for me.
Kind regards - manfred -