[X2go-dev] BKO and USB over IP
brian mullan
bmullan.mail at gmail.com
Thu Sep 23 19:10:51 CEST 2010
Speaking of Thin Clients...
Although this is not directly related to the Thin Client thread it is
something I was impressed with.
Boot Kernel Organization (BKO) <http://boot.kernel.org/>
BKO is based on a REALLY SMALL linux ... about 1 Megabyte. It can be
installed onto just 1 small partition of a USB, CD (or floppy if you have
one).
Its sole purpose is to boot and provide you with a simple GUI menu system
(see pictures on the site) where you can select which OS you want to boot
and then *BKO uses HTTPFS to download and boot that OS* for you.
NOTE: on their website their list of supported OS and OS version is very
outdated. When you actually do this you will
see Ubuntu 10.04 desktop and server, you will also see newer
versions of fedora as well as other linux distributions.
I've started using this with virtual machines.
I download the CD ISO and then use that to create a KVM virtual machine
instance using that .ISO file.
Why?
Well I use that 1 KVM VM instance to launch any new VM instance I might
need. Since it is only 1 Megabyte in size
it boots nearly immediately. I select which Linux distribution I want,
what version and the BKO then downloads the selected OS and boots it.
It has worked great so far.
Off of the BKO FAQ you should note:
BKO is based on HTTPFS and it uses only valid HTTP requests. It means, if
you have HTTP access, you can boot with BKO.
Only problem that may occur is if you are behind HTTP proxy. We plan to add
support for HTTP proxy in near future. Stay tuned till then.
It is expected that you can use *Public DNS* system as BKO is configured to
use Public dns servers instead of the servers provided by user or DHCP. We
will be soon fixing this problem. Till then, you are expected to have public
DNS access.
That 2nd paragraph *I think may be outdated* as I believe you can now
install the BKO "server" locally instead of using the BKO.org servers to
download from.
If you install your own BKO server locally then you "could" install all of
the OS's you work with on it. Then you could use your own BKO to select *and
more importantly boot a pre-configured OS* !!! I haven't checked but I
am wondering if a Windows OS could be booted using BKO as well?
I'm thinking you could have something like a preconfigured Ubuntu (or fedora
etc) desktop with x2go client configurations and applications already
installed and then just use the BKO and their GPXE to boot the clients.
I haven't gotten as far as looking into installing it locally so my current
workaround is to use BKO to boot then I use the python based Fabric library
to automagically provision the OS with x2go, the apps I want etc.
Fabric is really simple to use and lets you execute remote commands via
scripts so you can for instance install x2go server or client very
easily..
After the Fabric script is done my virtual machine has the OS of my choice
with all the apps and x2go installed.
Another interesting technology I discovered lately and tried out is USB over
IP. Perhaps this could be incorporated into a future feature for x2go
server & client ???
How To Set Up A USB-Over-IP Server And Client With Ubuntu 10.04
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
<http://twitter.com/falko> Follow me on Twitter <http://twitter.com/falko>
Last edited 01/18/2010
This tutorial shows how to set up a USB-over-IP server with Ubuntu 10.04 as
well as a USB-over-IP client (also running Ubuntu 10.04). The USB/IP
Project<http://usbip.sourceforge.net/>aims to develop a general USB
device sharing system over IP network. To
share USB devices between computers with their full functionality, USB/IP
encapsulates "USB I/O messages" into TCP/IP payloads and transmits them
between computers. USB-over-IP can be useful for virtual machines, for
example, that don't have access to the host system's hardware - USB-over-IP
allows virtual machines to use remote USB devices.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Preliminary Note
This tutorial is based on AliRezaTaleghani's tutorial How To Modify Your
Gnu/Linux Box To Serve As A USB Over IP
Server<http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-modify-your-gnu-linux-box-to-serve-as-a-usb-over-ip-server>,
but I've adjusted it for Ubuntu 10.04 (server and client). If you want to
use a Windows client, please take a look at AliRezaTaleghani's tutorial -
that part is still the same.
In this tutorial I use the server server1.example.com with the IP address
192.168.0.100 and the client client1.example.com with the IP address
192.168.0.101, both running Ubuntu 10.04. These settings might differ for
you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
2 Installing And Using USB/IP On The Server
server1:
We can install usbip as follows:
aptitude install usbip
Afterwards we load the usbip kernel modules:
modprobe usbip
modprobe usbip_common_mod
To check if they really got loaded, run:
lsmod | grep usbip
The output should be similar to this one:
root at server1:~# lsmod | grep usbip
usbip 15124 0
usbip_common_mod 13605 1 usbip
root at server1:~#
To make sure that both modules get loaded automatically whenever you boot
the system, you can add them to /etc/modules:
vi /etc/modules
[...]
usbip
usbip_common_mod
Now we can start the usbip daemon:
usbipd -D
root at server1:~# usbipd -D
Bind usbip.ko to a usb device to be exportable!
root at server1:~#
Now attach a USB device that you want to export to the server - I'm using a
SanDisk USB flash drive here.
Execute the command
lsusb
to find the corresponding Vendor/Device ID which is in the form of:
Bus XXX Device YYY: ID VendorID:DeviceID
The output on my server is as follows:
root at server1:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0781:5151 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro Flash Drive
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
root at server1:~#
The Vendor/Device ID of my SanDisk USB flash drive is 0781:5151.
Now run
usbip_bind_driver --list
The output on my server is as follows:
root at server1:~# usbip_bind_driver --list
List USB devices
- busid 1-1 (0781:5151)
1-1:1.0 -> usb-storage
root at server1:~#
As you see, the Vendor/Device ID of my SanDisk USB flash drive (0781:5151)
corresponds to the BUSID 1-1. We need this BUSID to attach the USB device to
the server:
usbip_bind_driver --usbip 1-1
root at server1:~# usbip_bind_driver --usbip 1-1
** (process:765): DEBUG: 1-1:1.0 -> usb-storage
** (process:765): DEBUG: unbinding interface
** (process:765): DEBUG: write "add 1-1" to
/sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbip/match_busid
** Message: bind 1-1 to usbip, complete!
root at server1:~#
That's it, we can now use the SanDisk USB flash drive on a remote usbipclient.
BTW, if you run...
netstat -tap
... you should see that the usbip daemon is listening on port 3240 so please
make sure that this port isn't blocked by your firewall:
root at server1:~# netstat -tap
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address
State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:*
LISTEN 537/sshd
tcp 0 0 *:3240 *:*
LISTEN 762/usbipd
tcp 0 52 server1.example.com:ssh 192.168.0.199:4024
ESTABLISHED 667/0
tcp6 0 0 [::]:ssh [::]:*
LISTEN 537/sshd
root at server1:~#
Copyright © 2010 Falko Timme
All Rights Reserved.
How To Set Up A USB-Over-IP Server And Client With Ubuntu 10.04 - Part 2
3 Installing And Using USB/IP On The Client
client1:
We must install usbip on the client as well:
aptitude install usbip
Afterwards we load the vhci-hcd kernel module:
modprobe vhci-hcd
To check if it really got loaded, run:
lsmod | grep vhci_hcd
The output should be similar to this one:
root at client1:~# lsmod | grep vhci_hcd
vhci_hcd 19800 0
usbip_common_mod 13605 1 vhci_hcd
root at client1:~#
To make sure that the module gets loaded automatically whenever you boot
the system, you can add it to /etc/modules:
vi /etc/modules
[...]
vhci-hcd
Now connect to the usbip server and get a list of available USB devices:
usbip -l 192.168.0.100
(192.168.0.100 is the IP address of the usbip server.)
You should find the SanDisk USB flash drive in the output (BUSID 1-1):
root at client1:~# usbip -l 192.168.0.100
- 192.168.0.100
1-1: SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro Flash Drive (0781:5151)
: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.2/usb1/1-1
: (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)
: 0 - Mass Storage / SCSI / Bulk (Zip) (08/06/50)
root at client1:~#
To attach that device to the client, run:
usbip -a 192.168.0.100 1-1
root at client1:~# usbip -a 192.168.0.100 1-1
8 ports available
port 0 attached
root at client1:~#
Now run...
lsusb
... and you should find the remote USB device in the output on the
client:
root at client1:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0781:5151 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro
256/512MB Flash Drive
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
root at client1:~#
You can now use the remote USB device as if it was a local USB device
(e.g. mount it, format it, write to it, read form it, etc.).
4 Detaching A Remote USB Device
A remote USB device can be detached as follows:
client1:
Run...
usbip --port
... to find out the port that the remote USB device uses on the client -
in this case it's port 00:
root at client1:~# usbip --port
8 ports available
Port 00: <Port in Use> at High Speed(480Mbps)
SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro 256/512MB Flash Drive (0781:5151)
1-1 -> usbip://192.168.0.100:3240/1-1
(remote devid 00010002 (bus/dev 001/002))
1-1:1.0 used by usb-storage
/sys/class/bsg/1:0:0:0/device
/sys/class/scsi_device/1:0:0:0/device
/sys/class/scsi_disk/1:0:0:0/device
/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/device
/sys/class/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.4_ep02/device
/sys/class/usb_endpoint/usbdev1.4_ep81/device
/sys/block/sdb/device
Port 01: <Port Available>
Port 02: <Port Available>
Port 03: <Port Available>
Port 04: <Port Available>
Port 05: <Port Available>
Port 06: <Port Available>
Port 07: <Port Available>
root at client1:~#
We need the port number to detach the device:
usbip -d 00
root at client1:~# usbip -d 00
8 ports available
port 0 detached
root at client1:~#
On the server, we use the BUSID (1-1) to bind the USB device to the local
system (the --other switch binds the device to the local system so that
it is not available over the network anymore):
server1:
usbip_bind_driver --other 1-1
root at server1:~# usbip_bind_driver --other 1-1
** (process:7333): DEBUG: write "del 1-1" to
/sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbip/match_busid
** Message: bind 1-1 to other drivers than usbip, complete!
root at server1:~#
Now go back to the client and check if the remote USB device is still
available:
client1:
lsusb
If all goes well, it shouldn't be listed anymore:
root at client1:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
root at client1:~#
5 Links
- USB/IP Project: http://usbip.sourceforge.net/
- Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Copyright © 2010 Falko Timme
All Rights Reserved.
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