"device_add" command?

[Oscarh]

Qemu has a management command "device_add", which can "insert" a PCIe device while the guest has been running. The added device is like a hot-plugged device to the guest, and the guest can access the device without rebooting.
Does Virtualbox has any similar approach to hot-plug a device?

Thanks
-Oscar

[scottgus1]

Virtualbox used to have PCI passthrough, it was removed in 6.1.0. Virtualbox 6.0 is still available for download, see:
https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds

[Oscarh]

Hi, Scott,

Sorry my question may not be clear enough. I actually meant to add an emulated device. Is it possible to add an emulated device (e.g. an NVMe drive) while the guest has been running? Do you mean this can be done with VirtualBox v6.0?



Thanks
-Oscar

[scottgus1]

OK, so you're talking about hot-plugging. You can search through the Virtualbox manual PDF https://download.virtualbox.org/virtual ... Manual.pdf for "hot-plug". (Change "7.0.6" for the Virtualbox version you want to read the manual for.)

It appears that Virtualbox has CPU hot-plugging, and disk image files can be set hot-pluggable too. Nothing else comes up. The same appears to be true for 6.0 as well.