20.16.6. Host Physical Machine Device Assignment
This section provides information about host physical machine device assignment.
20.16.6.1. USB / PCI Devices
The host physical machine's USB and PCI devices can be passed through to the guest virtual machine using the
hostdev element, by modifying the host physical machine using a management tool the following section of the domain xml file is configured:
...
<devices>
<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb'>
<source startupPolicy='optional'>
<vendor id='0x1234'/>
<product id='0xbeef'/>
</source>
<boot order='2'/>
</hostdev>
</devices>
...Figure 20.28. Devices - host physical machine device assignment
Alternatively the following can also be done:
...
<devices>
<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='pci' managed='yes'>
<source>
<address bus='0x06' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/>
</source>
<boot order='1'/>
<rom bar='on' file='/etc/fake/boot.bin'/>
</hostdev>
</devices>
...Figure 20.29. Devices - host physical machine device assignment alternative
The components of this section of the domain XML are as follows:
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
hostdev | This is the main container for describing host physical machine devices. For USB device passthrough mode is always subsystem and type is usb for a USB device and pci for a PCI device. When managed is yes for a PCI device, it is detached from the host physical machine before being passed on to the guest virtual machine, and reattached to the host physical machine after the guest virtual machine exits. If managed is omitted or no for PCI and for USB devices, the user is responsible to use the argument virNodeDeviceDettach (or virsh nodedev-dettach) before starting the guest virtual machine or hot-plugging the device, and virNodeDeviceReAttach (or virsh nodedev-reattach) after hot-unplug or stopping the guest virtual machine. |
source | Describes the device as seen from the host physical machine. The USB device can either be addressed by vendor / product id using the vendor and product elements or by the device's address on the host physical machines using the address element. PCI devices on the other hand can only be described by their address. Note that the source element of USB devices may contain a startupPolicy attribute which can be used to define a rule for what to do if the specified host physical machine USB device is not found. The attribute accepts the following values:
|
vendor, product | These elements each have an id attribute that specifies the USB vendor and product id. The IDs can be given in decimal, hexadecimal (starting with 0x) or octal (starting with 0) form. |
boot | Specifies that the device is bootable. The attribute's order determines the order in which devices will be tried during boot sequence. The per-device boot elements cannot be used together with general boot elements in BIOS boot loader section. |
rom | Used to change how a PCI device's ROM is presented to the guest virtual machine. The optional bar attribute can be set to on or off, and determines whether or not the device's ROM will be visible in the guest virtual machine's memory map. (In PCI documentation, the rombar setting controls the presence of the Base Address Register for the ROM). If no rom bar is specified, the default setting will be used. The optional file attribute is used to point to a binary file to be presented to the guest virtual machine as the device's ROM BIOS. This can be useful, for example, to provide a PXE boot ROM for a virtual function of an sr-iov capable ethernet device (which has no boot ROMs for the VFs). |
address | Also has a bus and device attribute to specify the USB bus and device number the device appears at on the host physical machine. The values of these attributes can be given in decimal, hexadecimal (starting with 0x) or octal (starting with 0) form. For PCI devices the element carries 3 attributes allowing to designate the device as can be found with lspci or with virsh nodedev-list |
