OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: openwrt as kvm guest

The content of this topic has been archived on 9 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Hello! I have successfully installed openwrt as a kvm guest using the excellent guide found here. Now that I got a working network around the openwrt router, is there a way I can use a pci wireless adapter on the host machine solely for the kvm guest as the wlan interface. I have searched so many places but I guess some users can get a wireless card to work on a kvm guest as a wlan adapter but I'm looking to use the wifi card to make my openwrt a wireless router. Thanks!

anyone? or is there a solution to get wifi on a virtual-based openwrt router?

If you want a practical, reasonable answer, it would be a firm "no". An easier approach would be to just add a dumbap using a hardware router/ AP to the mix.

For a theoretical answer, involving lots of pain and very special preparations and hardware, there is an option to pass through PCIe devices via VT-d (needs a CPU and mainboard/ BIOS explicitly supporting this) to kvm guests (this is not an really option for USB devices).

For a theoretical answer, involving lots of pain and very special preparations and hardware, there is an option to pass through PCIe devices via VT-d (needs a CPU and mainboard/ BIOS explicitly supporting this) to kvm guests

Thanks for the feedback and providing information on the "only" other option. It looks like I have a board and cpu that supports vt-d. Among the additional requirements necessary to perform a PCIe pass through to kvm guest, I'll also need to enable iommu. I can't seem to identify that anywhere in the chipset settings. Would iommu just be an alternative to vt-d? Thanks again smile

Or could I setup hostapd on the host machine and have it somehow bridge that device in openwrt?

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