Control: tags -1 upstream On Tue, Jan 28, 2025 at 09:52:08AM -0600, Adam Myrow wrote: > Package: libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu > Version: 9.0.0-4+deb12u2 > Severity: wishlist > > Dear Maintainer, > > * What led up to the situation? > I am blind, and have a Braille display. I would like to be able to use the > Qemu feature where I can pass the Braille display to the guest. With a > plain Qemu instance, this can be done by specifying "-display sdl" and > "-usbdevice braille" as options. The SDL display apparently is the only > one that works with the Braille device. Without this capability, I have to > use USB passthrough, and must stop Brltty in order to get the display to > work in the guest. This is irritating, as I then lose Braille in the host > OS. When Qemu is using the "-usbdevice braille" option, the Braille > display works seemlessly between the host OS and the guest OS. This > feature is the main reason I want to use Qemu, and I like the libvirt > interface, as it makes configuring a guest far easier than writing complex > scripts to get the exact right command line. > * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or > ineffective)? > Because the Braille device is not directly supported, I used the procedure > to add custom arguments to the Qemu command line. I changed the top of the > XML file so that it begins as follows. > <domain type='kvm' xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'> > I then added the following to the end of the XML file for the domain. > <qemu:commandline> > <qemu:arg value='-usbdevice'/> > <qemu:arg value='braille'/> > </qemu:commandline> > I then verified that the guest could see the display. It did, and is > communicating with it. However, because it requires SDL to share the > display between the host and guest, no text appears. So, I next changed > the display to sdl as follows. > <graphics type='sdl' display=':0' xauth='/home/myrowa/.Xauthority'> > * What was the outcome of this action? > The domain failed to start, giving the rather cryptic error "qemu > unexpectedly closed the monitor." > * What outcome did you expect instead? > I expected the SDL window to come up, and the Braille display to show the > text from the guest OS.
Hi Adam, having libvirt expose this QEMU feature sounds like a reasonable idea, however it's something that we can achieve from the Debian side alone. Can you please file an upstream issue at https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt/-/issues/ so that they're aware of your request and can consider implementing it? Thanks. -- Andrea Bolognani <e...@kiyuko.org> Resistance is futile, you will be garbage collected.
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