USB emulationQEMU emulates a PCI UHCI USB controller. You can virtually plug
virtual USB devices or real host USB devices (experimental, works only
on Linux hosts). QEMU will automatically create and connect virtual USB hubs
as necessary to connect multiple USB devices.
Connecting USB devicesUSB devices can be connected with the commandline option
or the usb_add monitor command. Available devices are:
mouseVirtual Mouse. This will override the PS/2 mouse emulation when activated.
tabletPointer device that uses absolute coordinates (like a touchscreen).
This means QEMU is able to report the mouse position without having
to grab the mouse. Also overrides the PS/2 mouse emulation when activated.
disk:fileMass storage device based on file (see disk_images)
host:bus.addrPass through the host device identified by bus.addr
(Linux only)
host:vendor_id:product_idPass through the host device identified by vendor_id:product_id
(Linux only)
wacom-tabletVirtual Wacom PenPartner tablet. This device is similar to the tablet
above but it can be used with the tslib library because in addition to touch
coordinates it reports touch pressure.
keyboardStandard USB keyboard. Will override the PS/2 keyboard (if present).
serial:[vendorid=vendor_id][,product_id=product_id]:devSerial converter. This emulates an FTDI FT232BM chip connected to host character
device dev. The available character devices are the same as for the
-serial option. The vendorid and productid options can be
used to override the default 0403:6001. For instance,
usb_add serial:productid=FA00:tcp:192.168.0.2:4444
will connect to tcp port 4444 of ip 192.168.0.2, and plug that to the virtual
serial converter, faking a Matrix Orbital LCD Display (USB ID 0403:FA00).
brailleBraille device. This will use BrlAPI to display the braille output on a real
or fake device.
net:optionsNetwork adapter that supports CDC ethernet and RNDIS protocols. options
specifies NIC options as with -net nic,options (see description).
For instance, user-mode networking can be used with
qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -net user,vlan=0 -usbdevice net:vlan=0
Currently this cannot be used in machines that support PCI NICs.
bt[:hci-type]Bluetooth dongle whose type is specified in the same format as with
the option, see allowed HCI types. If
no type is given, the HCI logic corresponds to -bt hci,vlan=0.
This USB device implements the USB Transport Layer of HCI. Example
usage:
qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] bt:hci,vlan=3 device:keyboard,vlan=3
Using host USB devices on a Linux hostWARNING: this is an experimental feature. QEMU will slow down when
using it. USB devices requiring real time streaming (i.e. USB Video
Cameras) are not supported yet.
If you use an early Linux 2.4 kernel, verify that no Linux driver
is actually using the USB device. A simple way to do that is simply to
disable the corresponding kernel module by renaming it from mydriver.o
to mydriver.o.disabled.
Verify that /proc/bus/usb is working (most Linux distributions should enable it by default). You should see something like that:
ls /proc/bus/usb
001 devices drivers
Since only root can access to the USB devices directly, you can either launch QEMU as root or change the permissions of the USB devices you want to use. For testing, the following suffices:
chown -R myuid /proc/bus/usb
Launch QEMU and do in the monitor:
info usbhost
Device 1.2, speed 480 Mb/s
Class 00: USB device 1234:5678, USB DISK
You should see the list of the devices you can use (Never try to use
hubs, it won’t work).
Add the device in QEMU by using:
usb_add host:1234:5678
Normally the guest OS should report that a new USB device is
plugged. You can use the option to do the same.
Now you can try to use the host USB device in QEMU.
When relaunching QEMU, you may have to unplug and plug again the USB
device to make it work again (this is a bug).