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    Attaching USB storage via XOA

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Xen Orchestra
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    • PeekP Offline
      Peek
      last edited by

      I have 2x external USB3 drives I'd prefer passed thru to a specific VM.

      With XCP-ng Center it's quite simple once one is aware of the navigational routes. That being

      • "General > Properties > USB > Attach" once the device has been passed thru, and
      • "Storage > Attach Disk" if not.

      However, it seems undoable via XOA...

      i.e. How would one go about to accomplish the following in XOA:

      • enable passthru for USB device
      • assign USB device to VM

      or

      attach USB storage to VM (without enabling passthru)

      In addition, I also found that the USB devices list and can be attached in XCP-ng Center, yet would not list in XOA ("VM > Disks").

      If they are passed thru and attached to a VM (via XCP-ng center), they then do not reflect within the VM...

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • olivierlambertO Offline
        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
        last edited by

        It's because there's not such demands on that so far. But contributions are very welcome 🙂

        PeekP K 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • PeekP Offline
          Peek @olivierlambert
          last edited by

          olivierlambert I wouldn't know where to start 😳

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          • olivierlambertO Offline
            olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
            last edited by

            You can already write a spec, and even also use our "inspector" to see exactly what commands are done by XCP-ng Center, so we just have to know which one to use 🙂 https://github.com/vatesfr/xapi-inspector
            Actually, it's a non-negligible part of the work (and also test the branch after we do it).

            Before investing time doing that in the UI, we'll first implement it via xo-cli.

            About the proxy,

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • K Offline
              kevnich2 @olivierlambert
              last edited by

              olivierlambert
              Is there somewhere to create a request for this feature? I understand it's definitely not typical but situations that require a VM/Instance to have a USB security key, external USB devices, etc are still out there and it would certainly be that niche case that would help give XCP-NG/Xen Orchestra the added edge in this capability.

              Thankfully this is possible through XCP-NG Center but I also don't know how long this will be a viable product in that it doesn't seem to have much support behind it and I have a particular situation that requires a VM to have a usb key for a software license key and at first had to eliminate this as a possibility to even use until I stumbled upon this.

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              • olivierlambertO Offline
                olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                last edited by

                Same message, if you tell us which commands are used exactly and how do you imagine it, that might help to get a faster integration 🙂

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                • K Offline
                  kevnich2 @olivierlambert
                  last edited by

                  olivierlambert
                  I have no idea what commands are actually being used, other than the steps inside XCP-Center that I do on the host and then inside the instance itself. I don't mind needing to use XCP-NG Center for this one specific task or setting, I'm just concerned that won't always be available to use as the years go on as opposed to Xen Orchestra.

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                  • K Offline
                    kevnich2 @olivierlambert
                    last edited by

                    olivierlambert
                    If there's a way to capture the commands being sent, I would be happy to undo the USB pass-through and then go through it again under Center? I just started XCP-NG and XOA in the past few months so I'm definitely new.

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                    • olivierlambertO Offline
                      olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                      last edited by

                      That's exactly what I wrote originally. You need to setup https://github.com/vatesfr/xapi-inspector and connect your XCP-ng Center to it. This will intercept all calls 🙂

                      rlyons20R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • rlyons20R Offline
                        rlyons20 @olivierlambert
                        last edited by

                        olivierlambert I actually have this need too, but it's not for USB storage. I'm running HomeAssistant on a VM, and I'd like to passthrough my Zigbee and Zwave USB devices.

                        Here is the xenserver doc on the topic: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX235042

                        I think it actually includes the cli commands.

                        Hopefully that's helpful!

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                        • olivierlambertO Offline
                          olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                          last edited by

                          We need the XAPI commands 🙂 Again, if you want this to be done at some point, we need more spec (because it means less time to actually develop)

                          rlyons20R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • rlyons20R Offline
                            rlyons20 @olivierlambert
                            last edited by

                            olivierlambert unfortunately, I can't get the xe pusb-list command to return my USB devices, even though I see them with dmesg.

                            So, I may have bigger problems here...

                            rlyons20R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • rlyons20R Offline
                              rlyons20 @rlyons20
                              last edited by rlyons20

                              rlyons20 soooo... xe pusb-list only exposes STORAGE devices. I verified by plugging in a USB thumb drive, and that shows up.

                              So, my use case of running HomeAssistant as a VM with Zigbee/Zwave USB devices is probably dead in the water.

                              That's disappointing...

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                              • olivierlambertO Offline
                                olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                last edited by

                                You might modify the filter to get your dongle detected 🙂

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                                • G Offline
                                  gpoole
                                  last edited by

                                  I wrote a script to set up USB device passthrough for a specific device by name to a specific VM by name in the same basic way the XCP-ng Centre UI does it when you follow the steps described in the original post. Here's the script: https://gist.github.com/gpoole/c89807e9de9cb5c87bbcc2da27e0c3e4

                                  Are those the commands you're looking for olivierlambert?

                                  Either way hopefully useful to anyone who wants to do this without using XCP-ng Centre. I've found it needs to be done every boot, so the script is intended to be something I can quickly SSH in and run. I'm sure it could be automated properly but works for me.

                                  M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                                  • olivierlambertO Offline
                                    olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                    last edited by

                                    Thanks for the commands. I just find it weird you need to do it at each boot, I don't remember having to do it here 🤔

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                                    • M Offline
                                      MattMcD Vates 🪐 Pro Support Team @gpoole
                                      last edited by

                                      gpoole Thank you! I'm sure this will be quite useful in my homelab, but maybe not at work just yet... particularly because I am hopeful Olivier and Vates are able to integrate this into XOA.

                                      This is because I am looking into integrating at least one HSM into our xcp-ng infrastructure, and the $650 USB-A YubiHSM2 is quite attractive. It would be great to be able to reliably pass this through via XOA to a Windows Server VM. I could imagine this use case being potentially important for small-medium sized companies looking for alternatives to typical expensive HSMs.

                                      C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • C Offline
                                        cyrus104 @MattMcD
                                        last edited by

                                        @xenoNfluX olivierlambert

                                        I would agree this would be great for the Z-wave/Zigbee dongles in Home Automation.

                                        Right now I'm working on a small homelab that can pass through the intel Quicksync to a Plex server and the USB to support HA.

                                        Having this in XOA/XOCE, even XO-lite (understandably not really a "lite" feature).

                                        S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • Ethan6123E Offline
                                          Ethan6123
                                          last edited by

                                          I am also interested in this feature.

                                          We use XCP-NG to run the virtual hosts in our DMZ. As you can imagine, the DMZ is completely separated from our internal network and the only way to transfer a file to a virtual server is to physically connect a usb drive to a host.

                                          We use Xen Orchestra for everything except this. When we need to mount a USB drive we have to physically connect a laptop to the DMZ network and then attach the USB drive with XCP-NG Center.

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                                          • S Offline
                                            SpoonyLove @cyrus104
                                            last edited by

                                            cyrus104 olivierlambert I'm also interested in USB support, and specifically USB dongle connectivity for HomeAsssistant.

                                            olivierlambert , you mentioned filter modification. is that at the xen level? Similar to many, i'm at the beginner level- I'm willing to tackle a problem or provide specification for further development, but i'm not sure where to start.

                                            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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