Homeassistant virtual machine USB passthrough not working

Setup & Installation
1

Hi,

I am running homeassistant in a virtual machine (because I use addons thus docker is no option). I have a huge zwave network, running on an aeotec gen5 usb stick. It’s been running on proxmox for years without an issue. I want to get rid of this piece of hardware since ugreen outperforms it in every way, all is running fine, except for the usb stick. It doesn’t get passed through so it seems. In ugreens virtual machine app, I am able to select the USB device ONCE. After committing it, it’s gone and I can keep readding it. This feels off but I can’t explain it. If I ssh into the ugreen and try:

ls -l /dev/serial/by-id

I get:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jan 10 10:29 usb-0658_0200-if00 → ../../ttyACM0

I was using this ID on my proxmox instance as well, it seems pretty standard overall, but after setting that in zwaveJSUI I get: driver cannot open path to .

What’s going on here? To me it seems like the hardware is supported properly on the ugreen, but doesn’t get passed along to the vm properly?

Any help is welcome, thanks!!

PS: I cannot seem to find the usb stick in HA’s hardware overview either.

2

Did you try using the guide on Ugreen’s support site?

The page is in English, but shows up in chinese when you link to it, for whatever reason.

3

Hey,

Thanks for another reply!

I did follow this guide, I just cannot get it to work within HA. To be honest I don’t nessecarily recognise this usb type of device in the supported device types on that article. I also got in touch with an engineer of ugreen just to be sure. I will get back once I find a solution.

Thanks!

4

Their support tends to be quite responsive, so hopefully they can help you out.

I haven’t installed any VMs, so I don’t have any ,more suggestions here.

5

Just a quick update, the ugreen support employee escalated the issue to their 2nd tier support, currently under investigation. I sent them a lot of logs, screenshots and configuration details. Basically everything I could possibly find, as per request. I will inform you guys when they get back to me.

6

After a long troubleshooting period, HA released a new base image for their virtual environments. 16.3 wasn’t dealing with the USB support on ugreen (for me at least). Building the vm on their new 17.0 image resolved the issues entirely. So for anyone out there having issues: make sure you’re using the 17.0 HA build!

I then tried to see if I could use the USB stick in a zwavejsui docker, that worked instantly as well (not too sure as to why though, still figuring that part out).

Anyway, all good for me now! Thanks!

7

Hi. I’d like to run HA on a VM as it turns out that a Docker based instance can’t handle new authentication systems e.g. Tapo devices (according to an AI). I’ve given it a go using the HA qcow2 file but can’t get it to work. Is there a resource I can find for this install? Ta!

[Update] should have mentioned I have a UGreen DXP2800.