Yes that’s another way to do it.
My cron job actually starts sys-usb just in case it accidentally gets killed (which is my favorite way to be burned by it, when I’m not actively tinkering with sys-usb).
I was dealing with two cases in my response. I realize now that wasn’t clear so I’ll give it another go. The cases are:
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Just a routine day with gubes, and you accidentally shut down sys-usb. You’re frozen, but the cron job restarts it and unfreezes you without you having to reboot. In this case you WANT sys-usb to run, but it’s not running.
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You do something stupid to sys-usb and now it won’t work properly, but is running and freezing you out. That’s the opposite problem; you want sys-usb NOT to run. The problem here is that just killing it never solves the problem; dom0 doesn’t resume control of keyboard and mouse (a deliberate design decision for security reasons), In that case, you pretty much have to reboot and make sure qubes doesn’t start sys-usb. Yes, there’s something you can do in the boot menu to prevent it. But, it’s easier if you just disable the startup on boot for sys-usb as a precaution–and also remove the cron job since it will fire up sys-usb for you within a minute of logging in (and there will be crying by the crashed bicycle as in the meme).
Your at scheduling of qvm-kill will stop sys-usb…but where do you go from there? Unless you did something else I am unaware of, doing so won’t re-activate your keyboard and mouse.