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3,171 Views 4 Replies Last post: Aug 29, 2011 10:15 AM by noahfriedman RSS
Giulio Novice
Giulio
12 posts since
Nov 11, 2005
Currently Being Moderated

Oct 27, 2010 1:56 AM

ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

 

==== First of all:

1) I understand this

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1021345

is the official list of supported USB devices; however I hope you'll have a suggestion even if my hardware is not on that list.

 

2) I understand there are alternatives to connecting an UPS directly to a VM (ie: network agent). But right now we don't have one of those UPSes and I'd

like to convert a physical machine to virtual with as few changes as possible.

 

==== HARDWARE:

ESXi-4.1 on Dell PE-T310.

VM (virtual hw v7): RHEL5.x (CentOS), latest kernel (2.6.18-194.17.4.el5)

USB device: APC Back-UPS CS 650 (051d:0002)

 

If used on the real hardware, the UPS is detected w/o any issue, I can start apcupsd and check its status.

 

==== PROBLEM:

If used attached to the VM (ESXi: add USB controller, then ADD USB device) the device is "partially" detected:

 

See lines marked with "<==== PROBLEM":

hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found

usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2

usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: usb_submit_urb(ctrl) failed    <===== PROBLEM

drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: timeout initializing reports    <===== PROBLEM

hiddev96: USB HID v1.10 Device [American Power Conversion Back-UPS CS 650

FW:817.v4.I USB FW:v4] on usb-0000:02:02.0-1

 

Those 2 lines are not present when installing Linux on the PE-T310 directly.

When used in the VM I can start apcupsd but then either I get no output from apcaccess or I get empty values, like:

 

 

 

CABLE    : USB Cable

MODEL    : Back-UPS CS 650

UPSMODE  : Stand Alone

STARTTIME: Tue Oct 26 20:20:05 CEST 2010

STATUS   : ONLINE

LINEV    : 000.0 Volts       <==== PROBLEM

LOADPCT  :   0.0 Percent Load Capacity  <==== PROBLEM

BCHARGE  : 100.0 Percent

TIMELEFT :  27.2 Minutes

MBATTCHG : 5 Percent

MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes

MAXTIME  : 0 Seconds

OUTPUTV  : 000.0 Volts   <==== PROBLEM

BATTDATE : 1980-00-00   <==== PROBLEM

...

 

 

==== THINGS I TRIED:

- adding the device to the kernel "quirks/HID_QUIRK_NOGET" list, w/o success.

- testing it on the same VM running on VMware Workstation 7.x: it works perfectly

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

 

Giulio Novice
Giulio
12 posts since
Nov 11, 2005
Currently Being Moderated
1. Oct 29, 2010 1:52 PM in response to: Giulio
Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

 

BTW, this is the log

 

 

grep -Ei "(usb|uhci)" vmware.log |grep -v "disk backing" > usb.log

 

 

Oct 29 20:40:51.353: vmx| DICT               usb.present = TRUE

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT         usb.pciSlotNumber = 32

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT             usb:1.present = TRUE

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT          usb:1.deviceType = hub

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT       usb.analyzer.enable = true

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT             usb:0.present = FALSE

Oct 29 20:40:51.354: vmx| DICT   usb.autoConnect.device0 = path:2/0/0

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USB: Search for USB devices to connect Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Generic' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USBGL: Connected to arbitrator socket: 39

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Virtual Hub' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Virtual HID' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.431: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Remote Device' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| RemoteUSBVMX: Retrieved hostId Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| RemoteUSBVMX: Protocol version 15

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| RemoteUSBVMX: no delay setting is TRUE.

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Virtual Mass Storage' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| USB: Initializing 'Virtual CCID' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| USB-CCID:  failed to GetModulePath.

Oct 29 20:40:51.432: vmx| USB: Unable to initialize 'Virtual CCID' backend

Oct 29 20:40:51.464: vmx| USB: Initializing 'UHCI' host controller

Oct 29 20:40:51.465: vmx| USB: Initializing 'EHCI' host controller

Oct 29 20:40:51.487: vmx| USB: Autoconnecting device "APC Back-UPS CS 650 FW:817.v4.I USB FW:v4" matching pattern Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:40:51.487: vmx| USB: Connecting device 0x20003051d0002

Oct 29 20:40:51.487: vmx| VMXVmdbLoadUsbDevices: New set of 1 USB devices

Oct 29 20:40:51.487: vmx| USB: Found device Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:40:51.489: vmx| USBGA: device 20003051d0002 arrived

Oct 29 20:40:51.489: vmx| USBG: CONNREQ: Dequeued head request after 2 ms for Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:40:51.557: vmx| USB: Device Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650 should already be connected

Oct 29 20:40:51.557: vmx| VMXVmdbLoadUsbDevices: New set of 1 USB devices

Oct 29 20:40:51.557: vmx| USB: Found device Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Oct 29 20:41:15.837: vcpu-0| UHCI: HCReset

Oct 29 20:41:19.375: vcpu-0| UHCI: HCReset

Oct 29 20:41:21.215: vmx| USBGL: SETCONFIGURATION=1 failed -1:16:Device or resource busy, work around triggered

Oct 29 20:41:22.034: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:22.551: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:23.054: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:23.559: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:24.064: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:24.565: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:25.071: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:25.574: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:26.080: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:26.581: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:27.086: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:27.591: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:28.093: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:28.601: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:29.103: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:29.610: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:30.113: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:30.617: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:31.121: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

Oct 29 20:41:31.627: vmx| UHCI: unexpected in/out 1 pid 69

 

 

I then tried  "uhci.syncWriteback = true" and "usb.generic.skipsetconfi=true" w/o success.

 

 

===

 

 

I verified that it will work if I take the VMDirectPath route instead of USB passthrough.

 

 

Unfortunately VMDirectPath has its own issues (all configured memory is reserved, no snapshots while running, all USB devices connected to the same PCI device linked to the same VM,...).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

noahfriedman Lurker
noahfriedman
2 posts since
Dec 3, 2009
Currently Being Moderated
2. Nov 7, 2010 9:37 PM in response to: Giulio
Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

 

I've been having this exact same problem with an APC XS 1500.  Interestingly, while the linux driver seems to have a problem, other guest operating systems seem to be able to interact with the APC just fine.  I tried installing apcupsd from pkgsrc in a NetBSD 5.0.2 guest and everything worked just as it was supposed to.

 

 

It's not clear to me yet if this is a bug in the linux HID or something idiosyncratic with the virtual usb controller, but I'm inclined to suspect the former.

 

 

I've tested in Fedora 10, 13, and 14, with both 32 and 64-bit kernels/libraries; and in NetBSD 5.0.2, 32-bit- only.

 

 

3apa3a.b.ta3e Enthusiast
3apa3a.b.ta3e
35 posts since
Aug 13, 2008
Currently Being Moderated
3. Aug 26, 2011 4:49 AM in response to: noahfriedman
Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

I have same problem. Did you manage to solve this?

noahfriedman Lurker
noahfriedman
2 posts since
Dec 3, 2009
Currently Being Moderated
4. Aug 29, 2011 10:15 AM in response to: 3apa3a.b.ta3e
Re: ESXi-4.1: USB passthrough problem with APC Back-UPS CS 650

Not exactly.  What I did was to get a Smart-UPS with a network card, and use that to monitor the status of the UPS.  The network interface provides quite a bit more information anyway.

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