Upgrading a VM from Debian Stretch to Buster breaks USB

[zinefer]

I have a VM setup that I have been passing a USB device into for the better part of a year. I went to upgrade it to Buster today by downloading
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/current-10/debian-10-openstack-amd64.qcow2. I imported the disk and updated the VM template to point at the Buster vdisk. I deleted the old VM and cloned the template to recreate the VM.

My machine comes up, Buster installed and everything seems to work except USB. Empty dmesg, lsusb and /dev/tty*. Any advice?

 

[zinefer]

If I setup the VM with my debian 9 image from here:
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/current-9/debian-9-openstack-amd64.qcow2 and then apply an upgrade to buster like this: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/how-to-upgrade-debian-9-stretch-to-debian-10-buster

Then I am seemingly up with Buster and my usb device. Obviously this isn't ideal but I am trying to figure out what the difference could be.

 

[zinefer]

Interestingly, lsmod in the stretch -> buster vm shows a usbcore, usbhid and usbserial. Whereas lsmod in the vm created as Buster initially has none of these.

 

[zinefer]

Using
https://cloud.debian.org/images/clo...ian-10-generic-amd64-daily-20210226-560.qcow2 instead solved my problem.