[HN Gopher] usbredir: A protocol for sending USB device traffic ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       usbredir: A protocol for sending USB device traffic over a network
       connection
        
       Author : sipofwater
       Score  : 213 points
       Date   : 2024-04-16 17:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.spice-space.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.spice-space.org)
        
       | naikrovek wrote:
       | Does this offer anything over USB/IP?
        
         | k8svet wrote:
         | I think just that it's plugged in at the SPICE level. So I
         | guess you could redirect a USB device into a guest that isn't
         | running Linux and can't run usb/ip? But also, this is how usb
         | redirection works with virt-viewer/virt-manager, I'm fairly
         | sure.
        
           | naikrovek wrote:
           | USB/IP works fine on Windows and MacOS, though MacOS has no
           | ability to use devices shared by USB/IP; it can only share
           | devices to others.
           | 
           | What is this "SPICE level" you mentioned?
        
             | touisteur wrote:
             | https://www.spice-space.org/spice-user-manual.html that
             | qemu uses a lot.
        
             | k8svet wrote:
             | Imagine you had a qemu/libvirt guest that understands USB,
             | but doesn't have support for USB/IP in "kernel/userspace".
             | 
             | usbredir gets your device to qemu, looking like it's a USB
             | device attached to the VM, without cooperation from the
             | guest.
        
               | naikrovek wrote:
               | "Without cooperation from the guest" is the bit of info I
               | was missing.
               | 
               | Thank you.
        
           | touisteur wrote:
           | Now I'm wondering whether someone has built support for this
           | in rust-vmm...
        
       | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
       | The one hack I keep hoping <someoneelse> will do the actual work
       | for is -
       | 
       | redirecting my steamdeck control via usb to my linux gaming rig
       | and expose it as a usb device(s) for steaminput.
       | 
       | It seems like a natural and perhaps even "straightforward" hack
       | but I've seen no evidence of one so far, perhaps there is
       | something in usb that limits the ability to proxy it correctly.
        
         | KeplerBoy wrote:
         | Sounds like something Valve should make. Kinda weird they
         | haven't so far.
        
           | ShamelessC wrote:
           | Valve's "remote play" allows one to play games on another
           | host computer via your Steam Deck as though you are plugged
           | straight. If you don't need the video streaming, you can
           | lower the settings.
           | 
           | edit; oh nm, user wants a direct wired connection to work.
        
         | jxy wrote:
         | it may not be practical given the possible high latency.
        
           | crtasm wrote:
           | over USB. what might introduce high latency?
        
             | all2 wrote:
             | Oh, oh, I get what you're saying. You want the steamdeck to
             | expose its controls as a hotpluggable USB device on another
             | machine.
             | 
             | That would depend on the USB hardware on the device, I
             | think.
        
               | callalex wrote:
               | Yet another reason I wish FireWire had won. It always
               | supported 2-way instead of a host-client model.
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | Maybe allow mounting of the the steamdeck input devices in
         | steamdeck:/dev over network on your linux box so it is exposed
         | as an additional device? Something like plan9 does.
        
         | delecti wrote:
         | It seems people have achieved that:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/v22ddf/guide_how...
        
           | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
           | That's over wifi not usb.
           | 
           | Even a bluetooth mouse has too much latency for many games.
        
             | ranger_danger wrote:
             | Demonstrably false:
             | 
             | https://www.rtings.com/assets/pages/46ieCfmI/mxvertical1-2g
             | r...
             | 
             | https://old.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/comments/hf1vrd/is_inp
             | u...
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy0xmcBg_IY
             | 
             | https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency
        
               | delecti wrote:
               | I didn't watch those youtube videos, but the text links
               | either agree with the opinion that bluetooth is worse, or
               | don't refute it.
               | 
               | That rtings graph shows that bluetooth is pretty clearly
               | worse in the majority of cases from wired or wireless
               | (which is distinct from bluetooth).
               | 
               | "Bluetooth" doesn't appear anywhere on that Reddit
               | thread.
               | 
               | And from the second rtings:
               | 
               | > The mouse's connection type affects the click latency.
               | Generally, wired mice have the lowest latency, and
               | Bluetooth mice have the highest latency. A Bluetooth
               | connection isn't recommended for gaming, but it's still
               | good for office use, and most people won't notice any
               | delay unless the latency is extremely high.
        
               | ranger_danger wrote:
               | If you look at the graph again, not all of them are
               | worse, which means it's obviously possible to make it on
               | par or close to it. But regardless, the complaint was
               | "too much latency for many games", which is not the same
               | as "worse". And I don't think this amount of latency is
               | too much for the vast majority of games.
        
               | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
               | Few/none of the wireless gaming mice are using bluetooth,
               | its proprietary radio protocols and usb dongles.
               | 
               | Click latency is not too useful vs swipe latency.
               | 
               | Bluetooth has a pretty low polling rate iirc and that
               | kills the swipe latency.
               | 
               | More generally and responsive to what we were talking
               | about, proprietary radios are not bluetooth and they are
               | not WiFi which is the latency we are actually talking
               | about (which is usable but not for me to play elden ring
               | by direct experience).
        
             | mike_d wrote:
             | VirtualHere will run over any network connection, that user
             | just happened to use wifi.
             | 
             | All the mice I am aware of that use Bluetooth are travel
             | mice and the like. Even cheap gaming mice use RF dongles
             | that do not have the Bluetooth polling limitations.
             | 
             | You can tell your friends in Fortnite you died because of
             | mouse latency, but lets keep HN discussions grounded in
             | reality please.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | To clarify: You want the Steam Deck to run USB gadget mode and
         | use that to expose its input devices to the other machine?
         | 
         | If so... while searching to see if the SD supports gadget mode
         | (answer: yes) I happened across
         | https://github.com/Frederic98/GadgetDeck - have you tried that?
        
           | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
           | This looks closer then anything I've seen so far, thanks!
           | 
           | From what I can discern its missing important bits of the
           | controller and doesn't have any steaminput profile etc so
           | it's clunky still.
           | 
           | Worth poking at though.
           | 
           | edit - to clarify, ideally steaminput would be tricked on the
           | host to think that it "was" a steamdeck so all the mapping
           | features would be available. I don't really need another usb
           | game controller its more the steamdeck touchpad etc.
        
         | dingensundso wrote:
         | I don't own a steamdeck. But searching around the web a bit I
         | found out that raw-gadget^1 was merged into the linux kernel in
         | 5.7.
         | 
         | And AFAIU that would enable proxying of USB devices.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/xairy/raw-gadget
        
       | MisterTea wrote:
       | On Plan 9 I just rimport the remote machines /dev/usb. Since this
       | is all over 9P it can go over any 2-way pipe, even rs232.
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | And, the linux kernel has plan 9 FS drivers. [0]
         | 
         | [0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/9p.html
        
         | alchemist1e9 wrote:
         | Is Plan 9 alive and kicking?
        
           | MisterTea wrote:
           | http://9front.org/releases/
        
           | rcarmo wrote:
           | Depends. There are still many enthusiasts (even new ports to
           | random chipsets), but there is also a bit of a schism between
           | the 9front folk and... let's say our current timeline. The
           | good news is that there are interesting things going on,
           | fortunately none of which related to current tech trends.
        
             | MisterTea wrote:
             | > but there is also a bit of a schism between the 9front
             | folk and... let's say our current timeline.
             | 
             | As a 9front user who attended IWP9 the past two years (just
             | was in Philly this past weekend) this really isn't the case
             | anymore.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Plan 9 is like BSD; the original is no longer developed, but
           | its forks ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_La
           | bs#Derivati... ) are healthy enough.
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | There was a thing that was around 10 or 11 years ago called
       | "Wireless USB", and it was actually kind of cool. It did exactly
       | what it sounds like, you could plug in two different arbitrary
       | USB devices into hubs or a computer that supported wireless USB,
       | and the computer would just recognize it as a vanilla USB device.
       | I don't actually know why it never caught on, I thought it was
       | neat, and it seemed to work fine. I guess due to the popularity
       | and ubiquity of bluetooth?
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB
       | 
       | EDIT: Looks like it was more than 10 years ago, circa 2009 or so.
       | Time has no meaning.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | First time I heard about Wireless USB was just the other day,
         | in a video looking at a luggable computer from 2006.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/OO5hYhdxIuk
         | 
         | Video is worth a watch although it also doesn't give an answer
         | for _why_ Wireless USB actually disappeared.
         | 
         | I was wondering after watching that video, if it could be due
         | to security concerns? Like, is the Wireless USB protocol
         | encrypted? And if so, does it use sufficiently strong
         | encryption?
         | 
         | I did find a document that talks a bit about Wireless USB
         | encryption.
         | 
         | https://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/appnotes/wireless_usb_e...
        
           | tombert wrote:
           | I actually saw that video, but I had heard of Wireless USB
           | for awhile. My manager at my first job after dropping out of
           | college the first time got it for his computer and he was
           | super excited.
           | 
           | At least according to Wikipedia, it was encrypted.
        
             | lupusreal wrote:
             | There's "encrypted", and there's _encrypted_. WEP for wifi
             | was encryption, but cracking it was so trivial that for
             | some years it was practical to crack yourself access to
             | wifi wherever you were on a casual whim.
             | 
             | Still, even if the encryption was very weak, wireless wifi
             | sounds appealing to me, at least for my old trusty wired
             | mouse. Somebody snooping on or spoofing my mouse seems like
             | an academic threat.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | > Somebody snooping on or spoofing my mouse seems like an
               | academic threat.
               | 
               | You're not concerned that anyone within a 100 ft radius
               | of you can inject arbitrary keystrokes/mouse movements to
               | your PC?
        
               | lupusreal wrote:
               | No, definitely not. The intersection of people who would
               | think to do that, have the skill for it, and the
               | inclination to view me personally as their target is
               | probably zero.
        
               | tombert wrote:
               | Not to mention that I don't think anyone but a few niche
               | enthusiasts even have the hardware to do it even if they
               | had the skills and inclination. Who's going to walk
               | around with a 15 year old laptop brute-forcing wireless
               | USB encryption, or find some obscure hub and do it on a
               | modern laptop?
               | 
               | I'm not going to say the likelihood is "zero", but I am
               | going to say it's so close to zero that it's really not
               | worth even considering.
        
               | ElevenLathe wrote:
               | Might be possible to do with SDR rather than needing the
               | original hardware. Not that this makes it super more
               | likely.
        
               | toast0 wrote:
               | Anyone within a 100 ft radius of my PC is in my house and
               | could just come over and poke at the mouse.
        
               | chrsig wrote:
               | That's somehow both a much less elaborate and
               | significantly more invasive approach to pranking wfh
               | coworkers.
        
               | codetrotter wrote:
               | > wfh coworkers
               | 
               | I usually call her my girlfriend, but I suppose that's
               | another way to refer to one's significant other :p
        
               | taneq wrote:
               | I inadvertently pranked myself like this. For a while my
               | laptop got super haunted, occasionally the cursor would
               | jiggle slightly even when I wasn't touching the mouse.
               | Eventually I realised that the Bluetooth mouse in my bag
               | which I'd totally forgotten about was getting bumped and
               | turning on.
        
               | coderjames wrote:
               | Or in the apartment or condominium above or below you
               | across any of a few floors, depending on shielding. For
               | those not living in standalone houses.
        
               | Terr_ wrote:
               | Imagine someone driving around neighborhoods with a
               | laptop and a very good antenna.
               | 
               | 1. Detect vulnerable networks in computers
               | 
               | 2. Pretend to be a USB keyboard.
               | 
               | 3. Trigger blind key combos that will visit a website,
               | confirm downloading a file, execute that file, and "OK"
               | privilege escalation prompts.
               | 
               | 4. Move on to the next block or cul-de-sac, while the
               | malware finishes unpacking and reporting home for further
               | use.
        
               | eichin wrote:
               | That doesn't need wireless USB, we already have
               | CVE-2023-45866
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38661182 for
               | "bluetooth stack more than 6 months old"
        
               | draugadrotten wrote:
               | Yeah, that has been a thing since the last millenium.
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving
        
         | hbossy wrote:
         | Most USB devices either rely on the connection to provide power
         | or are too clunky to move around, so having a wire doesn't
         | really matter.
        
         | y04nn wrote:
         | I recently found out that a manufacturer (TI, NXP, murata,
         | infineon?) was demonstrating a USB2 live camera capture using a
         | UWB (Ultra-Wide-Band) short range wireless transmission. But I
         | can't found the source again.
        
         | hex4def6 wrote:
         | I remember actually testing that stuff out when it came out. I
         | was working as an intern at Philips Semiconductors in their Wi-
         | Fi chip division. Speaking of time has no meaning... :)
         | 
         | I think there were a couple of consumer products that got
         | released - Linksys and netgear perhaps? They consisted of a USB
         | Hub + Dongle.
         | 
         | They actually worked ok, but the speed would drop off quickly
         | with distance. Across the room, and you'd be at 50% of the
         | rated speed, at best.
         | 
         | The technology was interesting. Basically they were
         | transmitting over a whole slew of spectrum simultaneously (from
         | like 2.5GHz to 5.5GHz), but they kept the transmit power low
         | enough that it didn't exceed some FCC threshold.
        
         | monocasa wrote:
         | Wireless USB was also the format used by the Xbox 360
         | controllers.
        
           | themoonisachees wrote:
           | Huh. I had a 360 controller and a wireless adapter for my pc.
           | It died a few years back though.
        
           | taneq wrote:
           | Does that mean they'll work with any wireless USB adapter? I
           | have a 360 controller but haven't been able to source a USB
           | dongle to use it with my computer.
        
         | dmead wrote:
         | I've been saying this should be a thing for decades. Not sure
         | why I never heard of this.
        
         | jsxlite wrote:
         | When Mac first took out the DVD drive, there was also a away to
         | mount remote DVD drive. I guess the push was to get everyone on
         | the network. So stuff like that just didn't take off.
        
         | rapjr9 wrote:
         | It was a very limited implementation of wireless USB. You could
         | only plug in two USB devices and only particular devices
         | worked, if I remember correctly. My suspicion is that the
         | reason it went off the market was because it used UWB and the
         | government put a lot of restrictions on its use so that it
         | couldn't be repurposed for use in military applications. It's
         | very difficult to intercept an encrypted UWB communication
         | link, or to even know it is present. It essentially just looks
         | like a slight raising of the noise floor across a wide band of
         | frequencies. UWB was required to get the necessary bandwidth,
         | doing USB across WiFi would probably cause timing errors in
         | devices because it would be so slow (at least using 802.11b
         | which was in wide use at the time). I think hardware makers
         | really hated the idea also because a successful wireless USB
         | system would allow sharing hardware between many computers
         | instead of buying a device per computer (consumer NAS was
         | expensive back then). It was also very expensive, about $400 I
         | think, which was a lot at the time for something that had
         | limited functionality. I remember thinking about buying one and
         | decided it wasn't worth it.
        
       | sandreas wrote:
       | Sounds a bit like USB/IP
       | (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB/IP).
       | 
       | Is this a new thing?
        
         | eqvinox wrote:
         | Both projects seem to be >10 years old at this point... might
         | be a case of "convergent evolution"?
        
           | sandreas wrote:
           | Probably... I thought of passing my iPod Nano 7g through
           | USB/IP to my Proxmox Windows iTunes VM, but I never had the
           | urge to do it. Although it'd probably work and would be great
           | in combinaton with Wireguard on vacation, I did not want to
           | setup a "risky" driver / kernel module on my main proxmox
           | server :-) USB passthrough always was enough.
        
           | ktm5j wrote:
           | I'm on my phone so I can only do so much digging, but from
           | the usbip sourceforge page that's linked above, it says that
           | development has moved into the Linux kernel:
           | For Linux, the source code of usbip was merged into the
           | staging tree, and finally has been moved to the mainline
           | since Linux-3.17. Development is ongoing in the kernel
           | community, not here. Linux distributions will provide binary
           | packages of usbip.*
        
       | andrewmcwatters wrote:
       | Remember Remote Disc from Mac OS X? https://support.apple.com/en-
       | us/101323
        
       | paulkon wrote:
       | I'm running virtualhere on thousands of raspberry pi's sharing
       | various USB devices to cloud machines over vpn. It's been working
       | without issues for years now. Seems to be a solo developer in
       | Australia that's been working on it for a really long time.
       | https://www.virtualhere.com/
        
         | brcmthrowaway wrote:
         | What possible use case is this for
        
           | zymhan wrote:
           | > This USB server solution is perfect for allowing USB
           | devices to be used remotely over a LAN network, over the
           | Internet, or in the Cloud without the USB device needing to
           | be physically attached to remote client machine.
        
             | scintill76 wrote:
             | Well, speaking for myself, I was curious why someone would
             | need "thousands", and what the devices are.
        
               | bdittmer wrote:
               | clickbot farm?
        
               | nicman23 wrote:
               | it is probably printers the horror
        
               | numpad0 wrote:
               | VDI?
        
         | kotaKat wrote:
         | $49 and a byzantine per-server-cannot-be-transferred license is
         | not palatable to me. I hate hardware-bound licensing.
        
           | rrr_oh_man wrote:
           | Would you rather like a monthly subscription per client?
        
             | HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
             | They didn't say anything about monthly subscriptions.
        
           | eps wrote:
           | Oh, knock it off.
           | 
           | The reality is that licenses must be restricted because
           | people cheat, steal and pirate. Hate them instead. Besides
           | $49 is dirt-cheap for what it is, especially considering it
           | covers all future versions.
        
         | theogravity wrote:
         | > thousands of raspberry pi's
         | 
         | so you've spent 1000s * $49 for the license?
        
           | rrr_oh_man wrote:
           | Why not?
        
             | squarefoot wrote:
             | Possibly because a developer hired to write something
             | around usbip would cost a lot less.
             | https://usbip.sourceforge.net/
        
               | dabber wrote:
               | > Possibly because a developer hired to write something
               | around usbip would cost a lot less.
               | https://usbip.sourceforge.net/
               | 
               | Would it? For the sake of discussion, I'll assume
               | "thousands of raspberry pi's" = 2,000 RBpis, or something
               | around $10,000 in license fees.
               | 
               | I don't know anything about either project beyond the
               | links shared by you and the root comment, but based on
               | the information at each link and the assumption of
               | $10,000 spend:
               | 
               | I would choose the one time cost of VirtualHere's
               | purpetual update license and release cadence over a some
               | short dev for hire contract to write some unmaintained
               | wrapper code around a sourceforge library that hasn't
               | been been touched in over a decade.
        
               | pmontra wrote:
               | $49 times 2,000 is $98,000, not around $10,000. Yet your
               | argument still holds. There are many reasons for that.
               | 
               | 1. You are paying a developer that works 100% on that,
               | year after year, and not a hire that won't be there when
               | something goes wrong in the future after an OS update,
               | new hardware, anything. This is basically your argument.
               | Let me add:
               | 
               | 2. In some parts of the world far away from SV but still
               | in the West, $100k are about two years of gross developer
               | salary, not what the developer actually gets at the end
               | of the month. Point 1 still holds. Where it's 10 years of
               | salary maybe companies could be tempted by a custom
               | solution.
               | 
               | 3. You are giving $49 per server to that developer but
               | you are probably getting more per server from your
               | customers. If you have thousands of servers you probably
               | have a viable business, so that's just yet another cost
               | of doing business.
        
               | beefnugs wrote:
               | usbip has made me angry for 5 years now, there is
               | supposedly an open source windows client, but you have to
               | put windows into some unsafe bullshit mode to be able to
               | use unsigned drivers?? So you have to compromise your
               | entire system to use one program
        
         | msbroadf wrote:
         | Correct, i am a solo developer working on it since 2010 :)
        
           | dmead wrote:
           | This sounds like a cool use case for my observatory control
           | box. Do you ever have issues with latency pushing the bounds
           | of the USB spec wrt latency? Can I use this with my camera?
        
             | msbroadf wrote:
             | I have a lot of astro users. But you need to use Ethernet
             | for the connection between VirtualHere server and client
             | and not wifi. A pi5 is very good for this.
        
           | zbrozek wrote:
           | I love your website. It's clear and to the point. I
           | immediately knew what your product did; thank you.
        
           | rawbot wrote:
           | Thanks for your work. I tried using it to use the official
           | Gamecube Controller USB Adapter through Steam Link, but there
           | was some spiking noise that killed playability. Nevertheless,
           | I think it is amazing stuff.
        
         | fasteo wrote:
         | >>> I'm running virtualhere on thousands of raspberry pi's
         | 
         | Offtopic.
         | 
         | Mind sharing what are you doing with thousands of pi's ? Thanks
        
       | c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
       | So basically this a USB device server but you can BYO hardware.
       | Use cases for USB device servers (according to https://www.seh-
       | technology.com/products/usb-deviceserver.htm...):
       | 
       | external disks
       | 
       | dongles
       | 
       | card readers
       | 
       | telephone systems
       | 
       | barcode scanners
       | 
       | medical devices
       | 
       | mobile gauges
       | 
       | output devices
       | 
       | audio/video streaming devices
       | 
       | scanners etc.
       | 
       | ...connecting a computer to a USB device that is further away
       | than what USB is physically limited to (distance wise).
        
       | 2024throwaway wrote:
       | This would have been great for me to have around 25 years ago,
       | when I wanted to mount a USB web cam in my bedroom window on the
       | second floor and connect it to a computer in my basement. I was a
       | dumb middle school kid and just spliced the usb wires onto
       | Ethernet cable ends, and plugged them into the existing Ethernet
       | run. That's when I learned about maximum USB lengths the hard
       | way, by frying some perfectly good hardware.
        
         | dTal wrote:
         | I would not expect this hack to fry hardware - at worst,
         | voltage drop, interference, signal distortion, and impedance
         | mismatch will simply cause the device to not work. But I've
         | successfully run USB 2.0 over 30ft cables despite it being
         | illegal per spec, so your idea wasn't _radically_ wrongheaded.
         | "Fried" is an extreme result - are you sure you didn't just
         | connect V+ and V- backwards or something?
        
           | 2024throwaway wrote:
           | It being 25 years ago, I'm not sure of anything. But glad to
           | know I'm not too far off or alone.
        
           | worewood wrote:
           | Yeah, probably just jerry-rigged an extension and plugged V+
           | into a data line or something like that. Properly wired, it
           | just wouldn't detect the device.
        
       | dotnet00 wrote:
       | Doesn't WSL2 use something very similar for forwarding usb
       | devices from Windows to the Linux VM? Through "usbipd"
        
         | naikrovek wrote:
         | Yes, Microsoft has documentation on how to set up USB/IP for
         | connecting USB devices to the WSL2 VM. It works quite well, in
         | my experience.
        
       | tamimio wrote:
       | Funny how yesterday I was using Winding Sandbox to test a
       | software and wanted to connect an iPhone to it, problem was that
       | there's not interface like a fully fledged VM and had to use
       | VMware instead, maybe this will do the trick?
        
         | naikrovek wrote:
         | USB/IP works fine on Windows, and there are a couple of good
         | open source packages for it. It works well.
        
       | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
       | What's input latency and throughput on this like? Would it
       | support near native keyboard / mouse, webcam or display output?
       | What about mass storage devices?
        
       | kimown wrote:
       | https://www.usb-over-network.com/usb-over-network-download.h...
       | 
       | I have used this software for adb debugging in rdp window10, it's
       | really cool, but it don't meet all cases.
        
       | j45 wrote:
       | A software based Tibbo for usb, awesome!
       | 
       | https://tibbo.com/
        
       | klinquist wrote:
       | It may not be well known that VMWare Fusion supports this.
       | 
       | I run Windows on a Mac Mini functioning as an ESXi server.
       | 
       | From my Macbook Pro, I can connect to it with Fusion Pro and
       | attach USB devices to the Windows VM. I use this to program ham
       | radios and troubleshoot my vehicle with Toyota Techstream + USB
       | OBD2 adapter.
        
       | lynx23 wrote:
       | usbip is a thing, is even a Debian package...
        
       | apt-get wrote:
       | I'd like to get a VDI infrastructure setup for me and my partner
       | -- something that enables both of us to run our computers with a
       | single big machine, and not have cables running everywhere
       | through the house, while being able to sit wherever we want and
       | use our infra from any given place.
       | 
       | At the moment, I've brainstormed:
       | 
       | - A main server that runs some type 1 hypervisor (Xen or Proxmox,
       | will need to see which is more adequate)
       | 
       | - Light "client" devices (laptop, for example), that may either
       | be connected in a wired manner to the server (e.g. separate
       | desks), or remoting into it through Wireguard. Each desk will
       | feature a KVM-style setup with a docking station that offers
       | screens, keyboard, and a range of USB ports.
       | 
       | - Individual VMs for running our respective OSes to our
       | preference, some flavor of linux distro. Inputs from the client
       | device (e.g. USB, Keyboard, Screen) should be forwarded / matched
       | to the VM.
       | 
       | - A windows VM for gaming, running two sessions for each of us:
       | GPU passthrough is a must. I would like to make use of Looking
       | Glass somehow, if possible either through the Linux VM on the
       | same server, or on the client machine. The latter would probably
       | be better for performance, I suppose, given you don't have to
       | forward input devices twice... but I'm also worried about whether
       | the buffer-copy mechanisms from Looking Glass would work with
       | such a setup.
       | 
       | So far, I'm looking into Moonlight/Sunshine as a general desktop
       | redirection setup: my hope is that I can pass something close to
       | direct framebuffers on an ethernet connection while at home, and
       | switch to compression while I'm away, hoping to achieve as little
       | latency as possible in all cases (so giving absolute priority on
       | the host to the streaming process, if possible, kind of like an
       | RT system). One notable thing is that Sunshine by itself doesn't
       | support generic USB redirection. Has anyone tried using usbredir
       | for this purpose?
       | 
       | In general, it's hard to find relevant information for this kind
       | of home hypervisor setup with a focus on gaming/latency and
       | general transparency all around... would appreciate tips if
       | anyone's attempted something similar before. Thanks!
        
       | actionfromafar wrote:
       | There is also USB-IP. https://usbip.sourceforge.net/
        
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