Re: Virtualization project idea

["Pasi Kärkkäinen" <pasik@iki.fi>]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 01:37:49PM +0530, Dhananjay Goel wrote:
>    Hi James/Pasi,
>    I had a look at [1]http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenUSBPassthrough
>    But I'm not sure if it supports sharing USB devices across VMs (host and
>    guest) i.e. if I plug in a flash drive then it would detect in both host
>    and guest and I'd be able edit files from all VMs rather than mounting and
>    unmounting everytime from 1 VM to other.
>    Please let me know your thoughts on it.
>

No, that's not possible with pvusb. pvusb is for direct passthru to one/single vm.
You'd need some filesystem share (cifs/nfs/whatnot) to make such sharing possible.

-- Pasi

>    Thanks,
>    Dhananjay
> 
>    On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 4:28 AM, James Harper
>    <[2]james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
> 
>      > Hi there!
>      >
>      > First I'd like to say that XEN plaform is really cool and awesome.
>      >
>      > I'm an engineering student and is searching for a feasible project in
>      > virtualization. I'd like to know if its possible to share USB devices
>      (flash
>      > drive, hard disk, mouse, keyboards etc) across guests and host (VMs).
>      Also, do
>      > you have any idea to extend it? Or any innovative idea so that we can
>      > implement it.
>      >
>      > I'd appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.
>      >
> 
>      Further to what Pasi said, I have partially ported the backend interface
>      and can hand you the code if you want. It's probable a bit stale vs the
>      current kernels and leaks memory under some circumstances but is
>      probably better than starting from scratch.
>      James
> 
> References
> 
>    Visible links
>    1. http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenUSBPassthrough
>    2. mailto:james.harper@bendigoit.com.au