Remote USB Passthrough in VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox provides the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) to enable guest VMs to connect to remote USB devices.
VirtualBox also supports remote devices over the network via the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VDRP). A VirtualBox VM guest can access USB devices on a remote computer accessed with VRDP as if they were directly connected to the local host. This allows the creation of an Oracle VM VirtualBox host that enables a client to connect from any machine with a network adapter that can run an RDP viewer. The remote Oracle VM VirtualBox server can access devices connected to the client.
When setting up filters for remote devices, you must specify either Remote or Any when configuring the settings.
Remote USB devices can only be accessed if the extension is supported by the RDP client being used. VirtualBox provides an RDP client for Linux and Oracle Solaris hosts called rdesktop-vrdp. The RDP client can be started with the following command:
rdesktop-vrdp -r usb -a 16 -N my.host.address
You may also be able to use uttsc
if you are using a Sun Raytheon client to access remote USB devices. Oracle plans to provide RDP clients for other platforms in future versions of the virtualization platform.
It is recommended that you disable the automatic loading of host drivers on the remote host. Failure to disable this procedure may impact the accessibility of the devices by the RDP client. The VMs VBox.log
file will track plug and unplug events when VirtualBox USB device passthrough is set up correctly.