I'd also like to point out that, when setting up a linux container with _just_ the lxc tools available in ubuntu, all that was needed to be done was whitelist the appropriate cgroups for the Android devices. The lxc tools seem to create the appropriate character devices when you detach/attach the Android device via USB, and the Android `adb` tool recognized the devices.

So, a tangential question would be, what libvirt domain XML ends up "converting" into a cgroup whitelist line in the LXC configuration file? (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_Containers#Host_device_access_settings for examples of cgroups configuration in a vanilla LXC config file).


On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Filip Maj <fil@saucelabs.com> wrote:
So, if I remove the hostdev element related to the USB device, running `lsusb` and `usb-devices` inside the container lists the proper device, but I do not see the appropriate character device bus for the Android device under /dev/bus/usb. We are not entirely sure that `lsusb` and `usb-devices` queries the appropriate location - it somehow gets information from the host, not the guest container, as far as we can tell.

If we specify the appropriate usb bus character device path (like you suggest, Cheng), then it does appear inside the container, but the permissions and ownership on the device seem to be incorrect. Here are the details of the appropriate device busses in the host (002 and 003 are the specific Android devices):

$ ll /dev/bus/usb/002
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root         100 Apr  9 18:14 ./
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root         200 Apr  9 18:14 ../
crw-rw-r--  1 root root    189, 128 Apr  9 18:14 001
crw-rw-r--  1 root plugdev 189, 129 Apr  9 18:14 002
crw-rw-r--  1 root plugdev 189, 130 Apr 10 15:25 003

Then, I removed the old mode="subsystem" hostdev element and added the following hostdev elements:

        <hostdev mode='capabilities' type='misc'>
          <source>
            <char>/dev/bus/usb/002/002</char>
          </source>
        </hostdev>
        <hostdev mode='capabilities' type='misc'>
          <source>
            <char>/dev/bus/usb/002/003</char>
          </source>
        </hostdev>

Then I get inside the guest container and list out the usb busses we just mounted:

$ ll /dev/bus/usb/002/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root       80 Apr 14 17:43 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root       60 Apr 14 17:43 ../
crwx------ 1 root root 189, 129 Apr 14 17:43 002
crwx------ 1 root root 189, 130 Apr 14 17:43 003

You can see the group that owns the character devices is different, and the read/write permissions are different, too. Not sure if this is the root of the issue, but, I noticed that difference. In any case, the Android devices are still not recognized by the container.

Any help is appreciated!

Cheers,
Fil


On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 8:50 PM, WANG Cheng D <Cheng.d.Wang@alcatel-sbell.com.cn> wrote:

Can you see the USB device in the lxc?

My answering assumes you cannot see the USB device in the container. If you can see it, please ignore my answer.

According to my understanding, “hostdev mode='subsystem' “ is used with KVM only. We use this if we want to passthrough a device to a KVM virtual machine. After doing that, the host machine will lose control of the device. If container is used, the container is not a real virtual machine, it’s just a group of processes and it shares the OS kernel with the host. If a device cannot be seen by the host machine, I guess it also cannot been seen by the container.

I used the following XML scripts to expose a third-party PCIe card to the container successfully, and I can access the card in the lxc.

<hostdev mode=’capabilities’ type=’misc’>

   <source>

       <char/dev/mydevice</char>

  </source>

</hostdev>

Although I am not sure if my card is a char device, but it really works.

If I use “ hostdev mode=’subsystem’”, it will fail to expose the PCIe card.

 

From: Filip Maj [mailto:fil@saucelabs.com]
Sent: 2014年4月14日 11:26
To: WANG Cheng D
Cc: libvirt-users@redhat.com
Subject: RE: [libvirt-users] LXC + USB passthrough = Operation not permitted

 

Hi Chang Weng,

Thanks for answering!

Could you explain why subsystem=USB does not make sense? I was simply following the documentation for USB devices (right above the section you linked to).

For what it's worth, I've also tried mounting the specific character device related to the appropriate android device into the container in the way you suggest, with no luck; `adb` still does not recognize the device.

On Apr 13, 2014 7:10 PM, "WANG Cheng D" <Cheng.d.Wang@alcatel-sbell.com.cn> wrote:

Dear Fil,

I am not sure if my answer can help you.

I had ever asked a similar question to Daniel and I was using a thirty-party card. As a container uses a shared kernel with the host, so hostdev mode='subsystem' doesn’t make sense. Maybe you can try to use hostdev mode='capabilities’. Please see http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsHostDevCaps

Hope this helps

Cheng Wang