USB Passthrough in Proxmox: Getting Dongles and Peripherals into VMs and LXCs

Sooner or later almost every Proxmox host grows a USB device that needs to talk to one specific guest. A Zigbee or Z-Wave radio for Home Assistant, a TV tuner for a media server, a serial adapter for a UPS, a security dongle for some old piece of software that still checks for one. Getting that device into the right VM or container is usually simple the first time and then mysteriously stops working after the next reboot, because the setup that worked was tied to something that wasn’t actually stable. Here’s how passthrough actually works for both VMs and LXCs, and where the stability problem comes from. ...

September 27, 2026 · 7 min