Hi Arnon,
I'm Albert Orriols-Puig, an assistant professor at La Salle -- Ramon
Llull University (in Spain). Recently, we have started using a
virtualization solution based on Open Suse + KVM + QEMU. Currently we
have some machines that use this software and host two Windows
operating systems: WinXP and Win7. The machines work quite well, that
is, we have a quite good performance in both guest OS.
One of the key aspects that we need is to give support to webcams,
since our users usually employ skype or similar software to make phone
calls. However, we have realized that QEMU does not give direct
support for webcams. We have searched for different patches, and found
yours, which enables transfers in redirected host USB devices.
We have tried your patch in a machine with the two aforementioned
hosts and a couple of logitech webcams. We have realized that the
guest OS detected the existence of a webcam, but could not show the
images of these webcams. In the WinXP system, the image was in black.
In the Win7, he detected the webcam but didn't allow using it since an
error popped up indicating that the webcam was blocked by another
application. We have searched for other patches that may help us, but
we were not successful.
So, I'm contacting you to ask you a couple of questions. First, in the
patch notes it is mentioned that the system worked for some USB 1.1
and USB 2.0 cameras on XP. Do you remember some of the specific
webcams that you tried and worked? If so, could you tell me the models
and any tweak you needed to do in the guest OS side to make them work?
It would be great if we could make this work even if we have to adapt
to particular webcams.
The second question is about the state of the progress on the support
of devices in QEMU. I've seen in some forums that there are some
people (including you ;)) working on QEMU to give support to different
devices. Do you know if there will be new releases to support USB
devices in a short time? We are specially interested in webcams, but
we would also need other devices as well.
Let me thank you in advance for the time spend on reading this email!
Best,
Albert Orriols-Puig, PhD
La Salle -- Universitat Ramon Llull
email: address@hidden
web: http://www.albertorriols.net <http://www.albertorriols.net/>