[CentOS-virt] Can't get USB printer visible in guest

Sun Nov 2 03:13:10 UTC 2008
Todd Deshane <deshantm at gmail.com>

Hi Mick,

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:05 PM,  <mick at mjhall.org> wrote:
> I'm trying to get a USB printer which works on the host (CentOS 5.2 x86_64) to work on a guest (also CentOS 5.2 x86_64).
>
> I'm reading Running Xen at the moment, it is a great starting point that brings together all manner of information in one coherent place, but I'm finding the section on Device Virtualisation a bit unclear (or lacking detail).
>

Thanks for the feedback.

> As I read it, to create a USB device for a HVM machine I need
>
>  device_model = "/usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm"
>  usb = 1
>
> in the guest's config file. There is not much more specified in the text than this.
>
> I've done this but without success. When I go to add a device to the guest in the GUI tool, I still don't get an option for any kind of USB device.
>

What GUI tool are you trying to use here?


> What have I missed?

Take a look here (with a closer look at the usbdevice option)
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/readmes/user/user.html#SECTION04320000000000000000

Also see some more details and commentary here:
http://www.olivetalks.com/2008/02/03/usb-forwarding-on-xen-it-just-does-not-work/

It seems that some devices don't always work out of the box, but
xen-users or xen-devel may be of help
if you get to the point of trying to debug it further.

Thanks again for the comments on the book, if you haven't already, please
consider joining the mailing list for the book. It is very low traffic, but the
suggestions such as the one above as improvement to future editions of
the book are always welcome. The link is:
http://runningxen.com/mailman/listinfo/readers_runningxen.com

Cheers,
Todd

-- 
Todd Deshane
http://todddeshane.net
http://runningxen.com