20.16.10. Input Devices

Input devices allow interaction with the graphical framebuffer in the guest virtual machine virtual machine. When enabling the framebuffer, an input device is automatically provided. It may be possible to add additional devices explicitly, for example, to provide a graphics tablet for absolute cursor movement.

To specify the input devices configuration settings, use a management tool to make the following changes to the domain XML:

  ...
  <devices>
    <input type='mouse' bus='usb'/>
  </devices>
  ...

  ...
  <devices>
    <input type='mouse' bus='usb'/>
  </devices>
  ...

The <input> element has one mandatory attribute: type which can be set to: mouse or tablet. The latter provides absolute cursor movement, while the former uses relative movement. The optional bus attribute can be used to refine the exact device type and can be set to: xen (paravirtualized), ps2, and usb.

The input element has an optional sub-element <address>, which can tie the device to a particular PCI slot, as documented above.