USB thumbdrive not being shown in removable devices in VMware Server.

[diablo75]

I have a USB thumb drive that appears to be recongnized ok within Ubuntu, and I can read and write to it, but I can't get the device to show up within the Removable Devices menu within VMware Server. Any ideas why?

Edit: Something of note (this could be a clue). This drive was once behaving as if it were read only. It once contained a lot of files that could not be deleted unless done with a sudo rm -d * command. And couldn't write any files to the drive unless sudo nautilus was run.

I'm wondering if there is something about permissions going on with this drive acting like it is.

[fjgaude]

Yes, you have to uncomment four lines:

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

Starting at line #45 make these four look like this:

	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

You may wish to add this line to fstab file:

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto 0 0

Such has aided in adding USB drives to the list.

Reboot and see if you can access the USB devices. If not, let us know.

[Tuxi]

This suggestion seems to work, but I can only mount USB disks that were unmounted when VMWare was started. If I remove the disk, I have to shutdown and restart VMWare-server.

BTW, I just did "sudo /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh start". This also fixed a usbview problem I had.

Thanks!

[fjgaude]

Well, a USB mounted in Ubuntu host may not be able to be mounted in the guest. I'll have to look into that. Is this your only issue?

[Tuxi]

The USB drive *must* be unmounted in the host. It's always been that way for me.

The issue now is that I can't remove it from the Windows VM and then reuse it without shutting down and restarting VMWare-server

[fjgaude]

You mean if you unclick it in the Devices menu of guest it cannot be remounted again without restarting the VMware?

[Tuxi]

That is correct.

[fjgaude]

Have you checked what the permissions and owership of the USB drvie is? What filesystem is the drive?

[Tuxi]

The filesystem is VFAT, the owner is my normal user, the group is root, and it's rwxr-xr-x (755) in Ubuntu.

I successfully saved a file to the stick in VMWare and removed the stick using the VM/Removable Devices/USB Devices menu. Upon reinsertion of the stick, the menu item was empty.

[fjgaude]

Okay, looks like a bug in vmware... the only thing I'd try is to make the group the user. Can't think of anything else.