Derek
2007-Jun-28 02:38 UTC
[Xen-users] Success: How best to connect USB devices to a DOMU
Hi folks, Following up on my earlier question to this mail list. Not sure if anyone else is interrested, but just in case. I wanted a way to access USB peripherals from my Windows DomU, using their native windows drivers. After some some unsuccessful experimenting with USB passthrough, PCI passthrough, etc. I bought the Belkin USB networked hub (http://www.belkin.com/networkusbhub/). Although the Belkin web site says it''s not yet available, it is. I paid $99 at Circuit City. I put the hub on my ethernet, pulled up a WinXP domU on my Xen machine, and installed the Belkin driver software from the CD. Works great. Now I can plug my Ipod, Ipaq, etc., into the hub, and they appear like magic in the domU windows environment. I have not yet tried all of my USB peripherals on it, but the ones I''ve tried so far work flawlessly. Derek. On 6/23/07, Derek <xen@sherlockmail.com> wrote:> Hi Folks, > > Interested in opinions on the best way to do this, and especially > tales of success or failure so I don''t have to repeat someone else''s > mistake. > > I want a DomU (winxp, hvm) to be able to access a few select USB > devices. No other DomU or Dom0 will need to share them. And, I > should point out that some of these are devices for which a Linux > driver is either unavailable or unsuited for my purposes, so I really > do need to run the Windows driver and have it "think" it''s talking > direct to the USB. > > The sort of devices I am talking about include: A bluetooth adaptor, > an ipod, an ipaq PDA, and an Actiontek "Internet Phone Wizard". > > Posibilities that I have considered: > > 1. Use USB passthrough, so DomU sees a virtualized device. I''ve > tried this, using the qemu "usb_add device" command. No luck, so far. > My DomU freezes when I try it, and I don''t know why. Also, googling > around, I''ve yet to see any success story with this method, so I don''t > think it works under Xen. > > 2. Use PCI passthrough, so DomU sees an entire PCI device. In this > case, the PCI device would be a USB adaptor, and thus WinXP will see > all devices and hubs under that adaptor. I have yet to try this > method, wondering if anyone has done so with success? > > 3. Using USB-over-IP or some similar network tunneling. So far I''ve > found one software-only product for this > (http://www.usb-over-network.com/) and three hardware products > (http://www.belkin.com/networkusbhub/ & > http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/facet.jspx?k=E5813A & > http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp). I can''t use the > software-only product, because it requires a windows computer as host, > with access to the native USB hardware. I have no such computer > available. The hardware products seem promising, but the Agilent and > Digi ones are very expensive, and the Belkin one is not yet available, > as far as I can tell. > > Anyway, if any folks on this list have solved this problem in any of > the above ways -- or others I haven''t thought of -- please share the > details with me. > > Many thanks, > Derek. >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users