I’m in the process of upgrading my server hardware; my DL380 G6 is older than dirt and long overdue for retirement. I figured while I’m tearing everything up I might as well upgrade how I’m installing everything too, and would like to move to the HAOS image running in vbox rather than the now rather limited Docker install I was previously using.
What I would like to know is how to get USB passthrough for my Zigbee/ZWave dongle working with a virtualbox image that’s being started as a service rather than through the GUI. My server is headless and has no GUI, everything is done through ssh. Is anyone doing this and can share their config and insights? I’m using Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS.
I did see galv83’s post suggesting usb passthrough was possible, but the link is dead.
Are you wedded to VirtualBox? If not, use Proxmox instead. Proxmox has a browser-based admin interface, making life much easier. Passthru with Proxmox is straightforward.
I use usb passthrough in VirtualBox for a Zigbee stick to my debain VM to run Zigbee2MQTT. I also only run in headless without a desktop environment. Did not have as much luck trying to get passthrough to HA while running HA in a VirtualBox VM. I think this is due to the requirement to have VirtualBox Guest Additions installed in the VM to get USB Passthrough to work.
All you have to do in VirtualBox after you have Guest Additions installed is go to the VM’s settings, then select USB in the menu on the left. Then just click the icon with the green plus sign and you’ll see a list of all the USB devices connected to the host. Just select it and bam, you’re done.
Once you do, the device should show up in your /dev directory like it would if it was connected to Ubuntu directly. I pass my zigbee stick off to a container running Zigbee2MQTT.
