I am a newbie when it comes to QEMU/KVM. So bear with my questions.
To explain what I am doing, I am a ham radio operator, and need to run Winlink radio email and VARA in Windows. That is all I use windows for. Wine is not sufficient to run it for some reason that I am unable to fathom. Therefore, I have had to resort to the Virtual Machine.
Now on to the reason for this post:
My host is a fairly recent Linux Mint 21.1. My Guest is a Windows 10. My usual method is to bring up Virtual Machine Manager, and run Windows from there. It works great UNTIL I try to use the radios' USB port for data communications.
The radio has either a C-Media chipset or a cp210 type chipset (depending upon the radio). It has the quality of being BOTH a USB audio, AND 1 or 2 serial ports (for CAT control and PTT). What I need to do, is to pass through both the audio part and the serial port(s) part as well.
But they might not be present, if the particular radio is not on. Which brings me to my 2nd question, how do I start up the VM without them, if I am not plugged in to the radio's USB port. And then be able to run the VM when they ARE plugged in. Which leads me to, can I run this whole thing via the command line with or without the particular USB port, and how do I create the command line version from the Virtual Machine Manager?
So in summary I have 3 questions:
1. How to pass through the USB device in question (both audio and serial) ?
2. How to make it all variable (sometimes one radio vs the other will be plugged in, and sometimes none at all) ?
3. If different CLI versions have to be made depending upon #2 above, how do I create that from what I have in the Virtual Machine Manager?
I hope this ramble makes some sense to someone at 5:00 in the morning!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and look forward to your answers.
Jerry
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Extra Ham Operator: WF5W
Registered Linux User: 275424
3D designer
The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny...". - Isaac. Asimov