[qubes-users] Help with qrexec [#usb #StandaloneVMs #external_devices]

I’m a completely newbie qubes os user and I have this issue to solve and maybe for you is too simple because you know what qubes is.
I created a StandaloneVM that means that it doesn’t communicate with other VMs and it souds great.
But I need, temporary, to relax this option and I see that there is a deamon called qrexec that is responsable of this channel, so if I get what it is, I should need the command to give in dom0 to open and close the devices communication ports with the VMs.
In my case I created both a linux and a windows standaloneVM but I need to connect a digitalsign USB device because its driver is only for windows. For linux I have other needs.
Could you tell me how I can open this channel ? so how I can make the usb available for the standaloneVM ?
Is it possibile to execute a standaloneVM as root ?

Thanks in advance

Ing

I created a StandaloneVM that means that it doesn’t communicate with other VMs and it souds great.

No, it doesn’t. It means it is not based on a TemplateVM. It has no impact on whether it can communicate with other VMs.

Could you tell me how I can open this channel ? so how I can make the usb available for the standaloneVM ?

What do you mean by making it available to the StandaloneVM? Is the StandaloneVM Linux-based, or Windows-based?

a. If it is Windows-based, the only feasible way with Qubes 4.0 is probably to assign the USB controller to the qube. This way, you assign all USB devices in the USB controller to the qube. Qubes 4.1 will probably also implement USB passthrough even for Windows, though.
b. If it is Linux-based, what interface do you want it to be accessible from?

Regards,
Vít Šesták ‘v6ak’

If I understand you, you want to be able to connect a USB device to the
standalones.
You *could* attach the USB controller to the standalone using the
"Devices" tab on the qubes Settings. I suspect that this isn't what you
want, and that what you want to do is keep the device attached to
sys-usb and pass it through to the standalone.
For Windows, there are Qubes Windows Tools, which provide *some* qrexec
functions, like inter-qube copy and paste. Unfortunately I don't believe
that the tools currently support USB pass through. So the only option
would be to attach the USB controller. (I'm not a Windows user.)
For Linux, this would depend on what distribution you have used for the
standalone. You haven't said. If it is one of the stock qubes distros
then you *may* be able to install qubes packages and have them work -
note that "may". The best bet would be to create a standalone from an
existing template.

I don't understand your question about executing a standalone as root. If
you mean "can I run as root in the standalone" the answer is "Of course"
- how you get to do this depends on what distribution of Linux you are
using.