External USB hard drive enclosure no longer detected

[Spectre216]

Good morning,

   For the last two months I have been running an ESXI box to virtualize my Plex (and various other) servers.  However, after a recent power outage, I can no longer get it to detect any external hard drives or my external hard drive enclosure, it simply says there are no USB devices connected. I have checked the drives in another computer and they get picked right up.  I have tried turning the USB arbitrator off/on and restarting the computer in between, but still can't get it to detect anything.  Does anyone have any other suggestions on how I might be able to get this to work again?

ESXI Box - TS140 (Lenovo ThinkServer with Xeon processor)

[virtualg_uk]

Are you trying to passthrough the USB drive to a VM running on ESXi?

[Spectre216]

I believe so. I was originally able to simply plug in my external docking station, and then right click on the VM and use "edit settings" to add the device. Now when I go to this option it simply says that "No USB devices are available", even though they are plugged in and not used by any other VM.

[virtualg_uk]

Try removing the USB controller from the VM settings and the adding it back in, then add the USB device exactly as you just described

[Spectre216]

No dice. Still get the message saying that no USB devices are available.

[virtualg_uk]

OKay, next thing to try is to restart all ESXi services. SSH to the ESXi host in question and run:

services.sh restart

This should sort it out, report back either way

[Spectre216]

Same message.  Do I need to restart the server or anything after running the command?

[virtualg_uk]

That's a shame.

No you shouldn't need to reboot.

Try rebooting the VM and checking the controller after > Remove & re-add the USB controller and try again,

Do you get "Service Running" if you run this via SSH: /etc/init.d/usbarbitrator status

Failing that you can try a host reboot but seems dramatic.

[Spectre216]

It says the arbitrator is not running

[virtualg_uk]

Okay, please run:

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator start

[Spectre216]

Restarted the service and reran the command to restart all services. Still nothing

[virtualg_uk]

I wonder if the service isnt starting for some reason, what does

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator status

say now?

Also, create a support bundle for the host and attach here so we can see the logs

[Spectre216]

It says it is running.

How do I create a support bundle?

[virtualg_uk]

For full detail, please see the below KB article

Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi (653) | VMware KB

[Spectre216]

Here is the .zip file that was created by running those directions on the main 120gb ssd that hosts ESXI itself (not the VMs though. Do you need one for those too?)

JOE-PC-viclient-support-2016-07-24@18-33-59.zip - Google Drive

[Spectre216]

Here is the .zip file that was created by running those directions on the main 120gb ssd that hosts ESXI itself (not the VMs though. Do you need one for those too?)

JOE-PC-viclient-support-2016-07-24@18-33-59.zip - Google Drive

[Baoyin]

Can you please post the results of the below command: chkconfig --list|grep usb

Have you tried below commands:

"

/etc/init.d/hostd stop

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator start

/etc/init.d/hostd start

"

What's the error in the /var/log/usb.log ?

[Spectre216]

I have tried those commands, and I don't see a usb.log file in the .zip file that was created in the previous post. I will try and run that chkconfig command and let you know the results.

[Spectre216]

All it said from that command was that USB arbitrator is "off".  I ran the command to start it again as well as the other command you listed. Still no dice.  Where would I find the USB log?