How to automatically connect a specific USB device to a VM with a KVM GUI like virt-manager or any other

Ulysses_ · 02-06-2020, 04:42 AM

In VMware workstation you can edit the configuration file of a VM with a line like:

usb.autoConnect.device0 = "0x431:0x5BA" # this is my smartphone's ID (edited)

and thereafter every time the VM is started or resumed the USB device is automatically connected to this particular VM.

How do you do the same with virt-manager or Gnome Boxes or any other GUI for KVM such as those below?

https://www.how2shout.com/tools/free...ger-linux.html

berndbausch · 02-06-2020, 05:47 AM

I don't know if virtmanager can do this, but if you are not afraid of the command line and XML files, you should read https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsHostDev.

Edit: How to do this with virtmanager. I found this by searching for virtmanager usb.

Ulysses_ · 02-06-2020, 07:25 AM

The solution with virt-manager works. Except you cannot boot the VM if the USB device is not present, you must reconfigure it. Bit of a pain, you have to shut it down and restart it to use a PIM for example.

Ulysses_ · 02-06-2020, 07:58 AM

When you physically plug in the USB device it should be connected to the specific running VM automatically, how do you do that?

Brandon58 · 02-07-2020, 02:42 AM

In the previous chapter we explored the creation and management of KVM guest operating systems using the virt-manager graphical tool. In this chapter we will turn our attention to the creation of KVM guest operating system using the virt-install command-line tool mcdvoice