USB device sharing (per servers and clients or VM's etc)

[vinceASPECT]

Hello forum,

I do not know the exact rules about software tools (open source) etc...... but i managed to find a free tool
that may interest forum members for use inside TCL.

TCL already has built in support for sharing connected USB devices between machines via "ethernet" or wi fi.
The built-in tool is called "usbip" but i don't know how much success people have or if they bother using it.

My challenge had been to run TCL Vm's inside Msoft HyperV and be able to physically see connected USB devices
appear inside the VM.  Since i wanted TCL inside a VM to have sound support..... and that's tricky but USB soundcards offered a method.

I found the free tool "virtualhere" for sharing real physical USB connected devices between networked machines and between machines
and VM's.

While it's free, "virtualhere" is in trial mode and you get permanent sharing of ONE usb device across netowrked machines and OS's.

By sharing, i think it means that the USB device will instantly appear in ONE machine or the network connected others
at any one time. (as you switch between machines). I am not sure if the physical USB device would (while appearing simultaneously)
in two or more separate network machines) actually be simultaneously able to be USED at the same instant by two or more machines.

Never the less, sharing physical USB devices may be useful to some people.

I tried "virtualhere" in TCL 10 and it works for sharing USB flash drives and sound cards between real physical
machines and machines to VM's hosted on that machine. (Hyper V vm's in my example to give them sound support via a USB soundcard)


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Approx advice below....

1) Download "virtualhere" console app from their website.
2) Change the permissions on "virtualhere" file such as
    $chmod +X virtualhere  (approx)

3)2) Open a terminal and load the needed modules for USB
that is..........
.............a)...... $sudo modprobe usbip_core........  b)............ usbip_host..... c)......... vhdi_hci  (approx)

4)  Open another terminal and  execute the "virtualhere" tool
     $sudo ./virtualhere (do not use any "n" flag) .............approx

5) You may need to do control alt backspace here and restart TCL then
execute it again.

6) Open another terminal and by typing "virtualhere -help" it should instruct you about itself (approx)

7)  Some example commands are LIST...which shows you all psychically connected USB devices available
and other commands like USE (then the device address from the list) will connect that device.

In the example here i use a USB flash drive....you then just see that drive.... and mount it.

The "virtualhere" tool works quite well and is simple. It could be useful to forum members on networks and so forth
who need to share physical USB devices easily.

 The "virtualhere" tool also fully runs on dCore in the gui style. There are some similar posts about this topic already in this forum.

I hope that recommending existing "out in the wild" software tools that need no MODS to correctly function in TCL is allowable.

regards

Vin