USB Host Device Assigned to Guest

Example Assigning Host USB device to a Guest VM

This example is based on qemu-kvm (0.15.0) as installed in Fedora 15. Will first show how to do this manually, and second how to do it using the virt-manager tool. This HOWTO is limited to UHCI devices (no USB2 EHCI).

Here we'll use a phone attached to the host:

# lsusb
...
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 18d1:4e11 Google Inc. Nexus One

(Note the Bus and device numbers).

Manually, using qemu-kvm command line

#/usr/bin/qemu-kvm -m 1024 -name f15 -drive file=/images/f15.img,if=virtio -usb -device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostaddr=3 

Here we add the

-usb

to add a host controller, and add

-device usb-host,hostbus=2,hostaddr=3

to add the host's USB device at Bus 2, Device 3. Simple as that.

Now, we can verify this in the guest:

$ lspci
...
00:01.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 18d1:4e11 Google Inc. Nexus One Phone

And on the phone enable USB Mass Storage, and the guest should display a dialog seeing a new USB filesystem. Open it and...

$ ls /media/[mountpoint]
Android/  data/  DCIM/ ...