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vmhilton
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 4.1.0 USB Passthrough issues both Printers and Storage devices

Hi All, Not sure if I am in the right place, very new to vmware communities and I find it a little bit confusing to navigate around.

I would like to know if anyone has come across the following and how they went about it.

I am needing to run a canon ip5200 printer onto a print server VM sitting on a esxi 4.1.0 host.  This printer connection is USB only, from what I understand esxi 4.1.0 supports USB pass through however when I try to do this nothing appears when trying to add the usb device onto a VM by going to add usb device in edit settings dialog box. 

Since this is not working, I tested on another identical server USB passthrough using a Kingston Datatraveller G2 usb drive, this worked nicely, I even tested a few other brands and everything there seams ok.  However on the esxi host in question it is not even recognising the fact this kingston usb device is even plugged in by the looks.  I have stopped and started the arbitrator service and even talked to support (of which were not helpful at all Smiley Sad) All they could do was pull our kb articles that I already had, nor could they comment on usb printer passthrough, makes me wonder why we pay so much for support.

Any information would be appreiated.

Cheers

Hilton

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scowse
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The first thing I learnt on vmware esxi is - do not count on using usb - even with 4.1

Network printers are the go here - see if you can get a trade-in. It will save you lots of heartache.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Is the device seen if you run lsusb at the console (or via SSH)?

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vmhilton
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Dave,

Yes, the kingston device is seen, below are details on the device from running lsusb as suggested.

Bus 02 Device 0a: ID 0951:1642 Kingston Technology

Thank you for the info, vmware support didn't even check this, go figure.

Any more suggestions?

Many thanks

Hilton

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Does the printer show up in the output for lsusb?

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vmhilton
Contributor
Contributor

Dave, I have to check this one out and get back to you.

Cheers

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vmhilton
Contributor
Contributor

Dave,

I checked if the printer comes up when using lsusb command, and yes it does.  Below is what comes up for it

Bus 02 Device 0b: ID 04a9:10a5 Canon, Inc. iP5200

FYI - I still can't get any usb memory stick/drives to passhtrough either.  I am starting to think there is something going on with the usb arbitrator service but that is just thinking out loud

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

You might want to reset the config on the host.

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vmhilton
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the info Dave, however reseting the config on this host is out of the question at this stage as it is a production host and has a fairly complex setup for it.

FYI - following is response from vmware support. This is what they asked me to do. - I haven't competed this as yet.

- Detach the USB device from the host.

- Reboot the host.

- Once the host comes up, attach the USB back to it.

- Run the lsusb -t command.

- Once done, please upload the host logs for us to analyze if the issue doesnot resolves based on above steps.

Go the reboot!!! Always thought rebooting was a windows thing for fixing issues. I guess not.

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