Proxmox – Passthrough card/device to openVz container

I wanted to passthrough a dual tuner TV card (Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T-500) to an openVz container in order to use tvHeadEnd.

Here I show how to achieve it with this particular PCI card but the procedure should be the same for any device.

First you need to know what device/devices you want to passthrough, in my case everything under “/dev/dvb”:

tree /dev/dvb/
/dev/dvb/
├── adapter0
│ ├── demux0
│ ├── dvr0
│ ├── frontend0
│ └── net0
└── adapter1
├── demux0
├── dvr0
├── frontend0
└── net0

Then you have to add them to “DEVNODES” in the configuration file of the openVZ machine you are targeting (eg: “/etc/vz/conf/114.conf”) like this:

DEVNODES="dvb/adapter0/demux0:rw dvb/adapter0/dvr0:rw dvb/adapter0/frontend0:rw dvb/adapter0/net0:rw dvb/adapter1/demux0:rw dvb/adapter1/dvr0:rw dvb/adapter1/frontend0:rw dvb/adapter1/net0:rw"

Instead of adding the entries manually, you can also use vzctl.

Hope it helps!
Andrea