Re: USB mini-summit at LinuxCon Vancouver

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 12:48:15PM -0700, Sarah Sharp wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 08:18:05PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 05:21:03PM -0700, Sarah Sharp wrote:
> > > Topic 1
> > > -------
> > > 
> > > The KVM folks suggested that it would be good to get USB and
> > > virtualization developers together to talk about how to virtualize the
> > > xHCI host controller.  The xHCI spec architect worked closely with
> > > VMWare to get some extra goodies in the spec to help virtualization, and
> > > I'd like to see the other virtualization developers take advantage of
> > > that.  I'd also like us to hash out any issues they have been finding in
> > > the USB core or xHCI driver during the virtualization effort.
> > 
> > Do people really want to virtualize the whole xHCI controller, or just
> > specific ports or devices to the guest operating system?
> 
> A host OS could chose to virtualize the whole xHCI controller if it
> wanted to.  That's part of the reason why xHCI does all the bandwidth
> checking in hardware, not in software.

And here I thought it did that so it would be "correct" :)

> 
> > If just specific ports, would something like usbip be better for virtual
> > machines, with the USB traffic going over the network connection between
> > the guest/host?
> 
> It could be done that way too.  But that doesn't help if you're trying
> to run Windows under Linux, right?  Only if all the guest OSes use the
> same USB IP protocol then it would work.

usbip works on Windows as well as Linux.

But how could you run Windows with a xHCI controller in a guest, as
Windows has no xHCI driver?  What would it expect to see?

> > > Hope to see you there!
> > 
> > Thanks for putting this together.
> > 
> > Do we need to sign up somewhere to give the organizers a sense of how
> > many people will be attending?
> 
> I private ack by email would be great.  Or you can ack by facebook:
> https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229532200405657  I could add the
> event in upcoming.yahoo.com if anyone uses that.

Nice try, but I'm still not going to join facebook...