Using Pvusb - Novell SUSE LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 11 SP1 - 8-18-2010 VIRTUALIZATION WITH ZEN Manual

8.5 Using PVUSB

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a common method to extend the capabilities of a work-
station. It is possible to attach an arbitrary number of devices to the machine, providing
for example extended storage, additional keyboard or mouse, Webcams and other de-
vices.
Xen allows to dedicate USB devices that are attached to the physical machine to a VM
Guest. Note, that USB devices will not survive live migrations and it is recommended
to remove any USB device before using the migration feature of Xen.
NOTE: New Feature
PVUSB is a new feature, and although it is tested and considered very useful,
due to the complexity of the topic, there may well be flaws to the system.
To assign a USB device as, for example, a USB keyboard device to a VM Guest, proceed
as follows:
Procedure 8.1 Adding an USB keyboard to a VM Guest
1 Plug the USB keyboard device into the VM Host Server.
2 Make sure that the kernel module usbbk is loaded by the system with the com-
3 Create a virtual host controller for the VM Guest with the command:
4 On the VM Guest system, load the front-end kernel module of PVUSB with the
72 Virtualization with Xen
mand:
lsmod | grep usbbk
If the module is not loaded, load the module with the command:
modprobe usbbk
xm usb-hc-create alice 2 8
This creates a virtual USB 2.0 host controller on the guest that has 8 ports.
command:
modprobe xen-hcd