Problem with USB in a VM with Linux server hosted on Windows 10

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jmglez
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2018 4:24 pm

Problem with USB in a VM with Linux server hosted on Windows 10

Post by jmglez »

Hi guys,

I've just received my bladeRF-x40, very excited about that, but I am having a very frustating issue. This is my setup:

- Hosting machine: Windows 10 pro
- Virtual Machine (with Virtual Box): ubuntu-17.10.1-server-i386 (3GB RAM)

First of all, I had to install the Virtual Box extension pack in order to get the USB3.0 devices recognized. Everything goes well in the linx virtual machine: bladeRF-cli -p command always reports that a device is attached. But as soon as I enter in the interactive model, a problem occure in a few seconds and the device is disconnected. Then, I have to come back to normal mode and connect the usb agai and start over.

Anyone in this forum has noticed this issue? How I can fix it?

Thanks,

JM

PS: by the way, in the windows installation happens exactly the same. The bladeRF CLI utily stop detecting my device after a while.
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rtucker
Posts: 77
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2015 10:38 am

Re: Problem with USB in a VM with Linux server hosted on Windows 10

Post by rtucker »

Greetings!

A couple things to check:

- Could you post the output from the "version" command in bladeRF-cli?

- Are you redirecting the USB port each time, or are you using a device filter to redirect persistently (VM settings -> Ports -> USB -> USB Device Filters)?

- Try running bladeRF-cli with "-v verbose" when reproducing the problem... on Linux, you can do

Code: Select all

script -c "bladeRF-cli -v verbose -i"
and it will write the terminal output to a file called "typescript" in the current directory.

- Uninstalling the Windows driver might be worth a try.

- Try booting from the GNU Radio live DVD (https://www.gnuradio.org/blog/using-gnu ... vironment/) or the Ubuntu 17.10 install media in Live mode, instead of Windows... this will remove Windows and VirtualBox from the set of possible problems.

- Also, if your computer has multiple USB 3.0 ports on different controllers, try another one: sometimes xHCI controllers can be troublesome, although they've gotten a lot better in recent years.

Let us know how this goes! Thanks ^^
Rey Tucker (she/her)
Systems Engineer, Nuand LLC
Rochester, NY, USA

#WontBeErased
creator9724
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2016 7:00 am

Re: Problem with USB in a VM with Linux server hosted on Windows 10

Post by creator9724 »

Hi, jmglez, i had the problem you describe when i tried to work with the bladerf under virtualization on windows 10. The problem is that you need also the driver on windows installed, so when you attach it to the virtual machine, it can pass the control to it. If the windows driver is not installed, even after you get it on the virtualized machine, it will disconnect the device because the hardware wizard will see under windows a unidentified device. After i installed the windows driver, it went to work and since that, no problems on that part.

Edit: I saw after my post that you have the driver installed. Maybe it wasn't properly installed the first time and you need to uninstall and install again as rtucker suggested.
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