VMWare USB

[adonikam]

my phone (Cingular 2125 smartphone) doesn't appear under "USB Devices" in my vmware. This used to work in 6.10. Now i'm using 7.10.
Please help!
Thanks.
Chris

[fjgaude]

I think all you have to do is uncomment four lines in mountdevsubfs.sh file, like so:


gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Starting at line 42 uncomment these:

mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Seems, for whatever reason, these weren't commented out in earlier versions of Ubuntu.Good luck, but let us know how you do.

[jrpurvis]

I updated to Ubuntu 7.10 and installed VMWare server today. I have vmware server now running the VMs I had created previously. I have been trying to get those VMs to see USB devices when I plug them into the host system. So far I have not been successful. I tried the patch suggested above as well as a suggestion I found elsewhere to add the line 'usb.generic.skipSetConfig = "TRUE" ' to the .vmx file for the VM.

So far neither have worked. When I check for removeable devices in the VM, none are listed. On the host system, they are mounting and I can access with no problem.

SOLVED - - Guess I should have read the suggestions more closely. After altering the file /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh as instructed above, I had to reboot the host. That DOES allow usb devices such as thumb drives to be mounted on the VMs.

[fjgaude]

I have printers, scanners, UPS, all through USBs, works perfectly.

Glad to see you have it all up and running.

I don't know why those four lines were commented out in Gutsy, there weren't in Feisty as far as I can remember.

[GuruX]

Uncommenting solved it for me aswell. I had to reboot Ubuntu to get it going.

[fjgaude]

You likely didn't have to reboot but just restart the script:


sudo /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh restart

The more I use Linux the more I learn, starting with Redhat in 1996. <smile>

[John9537]

This worked for me! Thanks :) It didnt work at first, even after a reboot so I added these two lines to the vmx file:

usb.present = "TRUE"
usb.generic.skipSetConfig = "TRUE"

I am not sure if one or the other would work on their own but it works now and I am not messing with it :) Thanks again!

John

[ogee]

John9537: Thanks for your tip. I had tried the patch above without luck then added your 2 lines, rebooted and then the VM saw the USB controller. The only odd thing is that to be able to see a flash drive I have to have it in a USB port before I power on the VM and then it will only see it as a USB 1.1 not 2.0. But at least I have it mostly working. Now to get the sound working :-)

[uvdevnull]

Those lines no longer exist in Intrepid's mountdevsubfs.sh file, so the suggestion above wasn't feasible and I didn't want to add all those lines because the file structure might have changed significantly since then.

However, I found this in VMWare's documentation on this topic, it's just a one-liner:


Using USB with a Linux Host
On Linux hosts, VMware Server uses the USB device file system to connect to USB devices.
In Linux systems that support USB, the USB device file system is usually /proc/bus/usb.
If your host operating system uses a different path to the USB device file system, run the following command as root to mount the file system to the expected location:

mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usbDo not attempt to add a USB drive’s device node (for example, /dev/sda) directory to the virtual machine as a hard disk.

Worked for me :)