[vfio-users] Virtual USB Keyboard and Mouse for guest?

[Jonathan Panozzo]

Your request “makes sense” but implementation wouldn’t be simple.  This also has nothing to do with VFIO, but rather, QEMU/KVM (I’ll let Alex W correct me on that if I’m wrong, but I’m 99% sure I’m right).

Regarding Synergy, there is a way to give Synergy elevated privileges so that when UAC pops up in Windows, you can still use the mouse.  I do this now and it works pretty good.  Synergy has other issues though, especially with applications that normally restrict cursor movement to inside the app (think gaming).

Does your idea sound good?  Sure!  But its most definitely something that would be a bit complicated to implement.  What “key combination” would be ok to restrict on the keyboard to sending a command to the host?  What if a guest needs that combination to execute another function?  Lots of potential “gotchas” that would need to be considered.

PS:  always a pleasure to meet another Jonathan ;-)

- Jonathan Panozzo

> On Aug 31, 2015, at 1:18 PM, Jonathan Scruggs <j.scruggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> This is an idea I had that would be really cool if possible. If it is, you may want to somehow build it into VirtManager or something.
> 
> Currently, I have a Windows guest using Synergy, but somethings Windows has popups that disable Synergy and only a real mouse would work. Also, you can't update Synergy while using Synergy. My solution which is better than Synergy and solves these issues:
> 
> Would it be possible to have the real mouse and keyboard that is plugged into the host to be (this is where I struggle for the right words) duplicated/virtualized/emulated so that they can be passed through to the guest as a USB device and used on the host system as well. There would be a program that listens for a certain key combination that would switch the control to either the VM or host. Then windows would think it has a real USB keyboard and mouse rather than Synergy. This is especially useful when there is a dedicated graphics card passed through.
> 
> This seems like something that VirtManger can have built in, like select an option to do this and it would switch the inputs between the systems. The only thing is, is that the mouse and keyboard would still need to be visible to the guest/host just no movements/keystrokes being sent. Also, calling external programs, like those that can switch monitor inputs should be added to this.
> 
> This will lose the clipboard sharing and other features of Synergy, but I don't use those anyways, and this would be a lot more stable and better for the guests.
> 
> Does this make sense?
> 
> Thanks,
> Jon
> _______________________________________________
> vfio-users mailing list
> vfio-users at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users