PVE USB passthrough

In the past, when you released the 0.15 pve-qemu-kvm package the "passthrough of USB" did not work anymore and
despite the use of an external key did not work anymore with the internal machine.
Downgrading to 0.14 solved the problem.
My question is about this thread: http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/7744-usb-passthrough

The downgrade to 0.15 didn't solve...

and 0.14 works like a charme(for USB)

Diaolin
 
Hi Diaolin,

Thanks for the reminder. I had to test this on PVE 2.0, and I forgot. I just did a little test for USB Passthrough, and it does not seem to work, but perhaps I did not things correctly.

So, on a fully updated PVE 2.0 RC1 host, I did the following, after having read the man pages for qm set :
I enter lsusb to find vendor_id: product_id :
# lsusb
....
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0951:1602 Kingston Technology DataTraveler Mini
...

The little USB stick I want to add to the VM 101, is this one (certainly Kingston USB stick, even if it is not written on the stick). So I entered on the host :
# qm set 101 -usb1 host=0951:1602

It gives in the machine conf file :
# cat 101.conf
bootdisk: ide0
cores: 1
ide0: local:101/vm-101-disk-1.qcow2
ide2: local:iso/virtio-win-0.1-15.iso,media=cdrom
memory: 512
name: pc-2003-test
net0: virtio=C2:52:41:32:80:7E,bridge=vmbr0
onboot: 1
ostype: wxp
sockets: 1
usb1: host=0951:1602
virtio1: local:101/vm-101-disk-2.raw

The VM is a windows 2003 R2 server. Then I stopped the VM, and started it again. But it never completed boot. I have a black screen in the console just after the windows 2003 boot screen. And no network, I verified.

I tried with a different number for usb : usb4 instaed of usb1 (in case there was a conflict with another device), but is is the same.
When I remove the line, the VM boots again normally.

Did I do something wrong, or USB passthrough is not working at this time in PVE 2.0 ?

Alain
 
Last edited:
Hi Alain,
usb support is currently in rewriting stage in qemu-kvm, I following the mailing actively, and some big patches must come in coming weeks.
So, I think you just need to wait a little.
(just retry when a new pve-qemu-kvm package is published)
 
Hi spirit,

I also saw something on these lines, on PVE dev mailing list. So, we can say that USB Passthrough is not working at this moment on PVE 2.0 ? I hope indeed these new patches will improve the situation.

In fact, I have a license flexlm server at this moment under PVE 1.9. One of these license use an USB dongle. It is working with pve-qemu-kvm version 0.15.0-1, but no more with 0.15.0-2, so I have each time I updtate the server is to reinstall the old package, as indicated by diaolin. What I did recently is to mark the package as not upgradable with 'hold' option of aptitude :
# aptitude hold pve-qemu-kvm

To re-enable the update of the package, just do :
# aptitude unhold pve-qemu-kvm

So, in my plan to upgrade to PVE 2.0, USB passthrough has to work...

Alain
 
Last edited:
I also saw something on these lines, on PVE dev mailing list. So, we can say that USB Passthrough is not working at this moment on PVE 2.0 ?

It works for me. But it is currently a bit device dependent - we hope that gets fixed soon.
 
The strange situation is that a dongle works with a winXP VM and another dongle does not work with a Linux machine. Bub, if i install
the 0.14 version all is ok.

Note that if i do lsusb in the VM the result is the same with 0.15 and 0.14 but in the 0.15 version the key results unreadable.

In any case i wait...

Tx, Diaolin
 
Hi spirit,

I also saw something on these lines, on PVE dev mailing list. So, we can say that USB Passthrough is not working at this moment on PVE 2.0 ? I hope indeed these new patches will improve the situation.

In fact, I have a license flexlm server at this moment under PVE 1.9. One of these license use an USB dongle. It is working with pve-qemu-kvm version 0.15.0-1, but no more with 0.15.0-2, so I have each time I updtate the server is to reinstall the old package, as indicated by diaolin. What I did recently is to mark the package as not upgradable with 'hold' option of aptitude :
# aptitude hold pve-qemu-kvm

To re-enable the update of the package, just do :
# aptitude unhold pve-qemu-kvm

So, in my plan to upgrade to PVE 2.0, USB passthrough has to work...

Alain

I just want to say that "maybe" thing are not yet working good.
I think qemu dev have done 95% of the usb-work. So final patches are coming soon.
We just need to wait...

some infos on the usb rework:

http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j...paUheIXj0GHLoJZpg&sig2=xjchwP-qZhOEGHKrnPC1Cg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXPW6xWgQZE
 
I did a new test after the last kernel upadte (PVE 2.0 final, updated from RC1). The same USB stick is mounting fine now under windows 2003 R2.
root@lx-ape3:/etc/qemu-server# uname -a
Linux lx-ape3 2.6.32-11-pve #1 SMP Tue Apr 3 10:21:21 CEST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

So USB passthrough seems to work now correctly with last PVE 2.0.

But I have another problem I will report elsewhere. VNC console is not working for me with this last update.

Alain
 

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