Pass a usb device to ZVM?

Insight & Feedback
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Is this possible? I can’t find an option anywhere. Does anyone have a workaround? Even something hacky will do until official support comes.

I need to pass my zigbee dongle to Home Assistant OS.

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2

Sorry, it’s not supported yet.

3

Do you know if it’s on the list to be implemented soon?

USB pass through and auto starting a ZVM are the features that I really need

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Hello, I will give feedback to the product manager soon. I’m sorry that we are a small team and cannot meet everyone’s needs at the first time, but we will speed up and I will tell you any updates!

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Hello I have seen people successfully completing this, perhaps you could try it?

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This worked, thanks.

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Marvelous!

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It gets easier:

Connect to the ZimaOS server using ssh with the root account

type lsusb and identify your key


Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1a86:55d4 QinHeng Electronics SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2

The 1a86:55d4 is the Vendor ID:Product ID (VID:PID).

Create the file /tmp/usb-sonoff.xml and fill it with the following information

<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb'>

<source>

<vendor id='0x1a86'/>

<product id='0x55d4'/>

</source>

</hostdev>

Next, add the key to the virtual machine

virsh attach-device your_vm_name --file /tmp/usb-sonoff.xml --persistent

Restart your VM and you’ll see Zigbee integration in Home assistant

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that actually worked for my UPS. Thanks

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Worked for me too. Thanks leglen38

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This didn’t seem to work for me, after following the instructions I get

“error:failed to connect to the hypervisor”

“error: cannot create user runtime directory ‘/DATA/.cache/libvirt’: Permission denied"

I was following through trying to get an external HDD to show up in ZVM. I substituted the vendor/product id but kept everything else the same.

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Yes, this method is correct and currently the cleanest way to pass a USB device to a ZVM on ZimaOS.

Using lsusb to identify the VID:PID and attaching it with virsh attach-device is the proper libvirt approach.

Two small additions for stability:

  1. If the device disconnects/reconnects, re-attach may be required unless it’s defined persistently in the VM XML.
  2. For best reliability, you can permanently add the <hostdev> block directly into the VM definition via:
virsh edit your_vm_name

Then paste the <hostdev> section inside the <devices> block.

This avoids using /tmp and survives reboots cleanly.

Good share, much simpler than earlier workaround methods.

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