==== First of all:
1) I understand this
is the official list of supported USB devices; however I hope you'll have a suggestion even if my hardware is not on that list.
2) I understand there are alternatives to connecting an UPS directly to a VM (ie: network agent). But right now we don't have one of those UPSes and I'd
like to convert a physical machine to virtual with as few changes as possible.
==== HARDWARE:
ESXi-4.1 on Dell PE-T310.
VM (virtual hw v7): RHEL5.x (CentOS), latest kernel (2.6.18-194.17.4.el5)
USB device: APC Back-UPS CS 650 (051d:0002)
If used on the real hardware, the UPS is detected w/o any issue, I can start apcupsd and check its status.
==== PROBLEM:
If used attached to the VM (ESXi: add USB controller, then ADD USB device) the device is "partially" detected:
See lines marked with "<==== PROBLEM":
hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: usb_submit_urb(ctrl) failed <===== PROBLEM
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: timeout initializing reports <===== PROBLEM
hiddev96: USB HID v1.10 Device [American Power Conversion Back-UPS CS 650
FW:817.v4.I USB FW:v4] on usb-0000:02:02.0-1
Those 2 lines are not present when installing Linux on the PE-T310 directly.
When used in the VM I can start apcupsd but then either I get no output from apcaccess or I get empty values, like:
CABLE : USB Cable
MODEL : Back-UPS CS 650
UPSMODE : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: Tue Oct 26 20:20:05 CEST 2010
STATUS : ONLINE
LINEV : 000.0 Volts <==== PROBLEM
LOADPCT : 0.0 Percent Load Capacity <==== PROBLEM
BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 27.2 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 5 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME : 0 Seconds
OUTPUTV : 000.0 Volts <==== PROBLEM
BATTDATE : 1980-00-00 <==== PROBLEM
...
==== THINGS I TRIED:
- adding the device to the kernel "quirks/HID_QUIRK_NOGET" list, w/o success.
- testing it on the same VM running on VMware Workstation 7.x: it works perfectly
Any suggestions?
Thanks