Fusion 11.5.5 USB is BROKEN - proof

[JohnD0406]

Was running Fusion 11.5.3 on Catalina 10.15.4 with no issues.  Upgraded to Fusion 11.5.5 and could no longer forward/mount USB drives in Win10 guest.

• Upgraded the Win10 VM to May 2020 update, did not resolve the issue.
• Upgraded Catalina to 10.15.5, did not resolve the issue.
• Removed/reinstalled VMware tools, did not resolve the issue.
• Downgraded to Fusion 11.5.3 and can finally mount USB drives again.

I plan to stick with 11.5.3 for a long time, until release notes in a future version specifically address this issue.

[markn456]

Kamen,

I added the lines to the config file as you suggested. It is interesting that Fusion believes both devices are connected. Windows however does not see them.  For your reference, I have uploaded The support bundles.

The bundles are:

• Fusion 11.5.6 - VMware Fusion Problem Report 2020-10-28 at 07.01.51
• Fusion 11.5.3 - VMware Fusion Problem Report 2020-10-28 at 07.24.11

As you will see, fusion 11.5.6 thinks the USB drives are connected. Windows never connects to the device. On the other hand, Fusion 11.5.3 works as expected and the USB devices connect immediately and Windows can access the USB devices as expected. Note, on Fusion 11.5.3 it does not have a config file since that was added to aid in troubleshooting 11.5.6.

Regards,

-Mark

[markn456]

Kamen,

What are our next steps?

Thanks,

Mark

[KamenGopin84]

Hi Mark,

It seems the issue is caused by a 3rd party USB driver (com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt) which has claimed all USB Mass Storage devices on the machine (USB flash drives, etc). I am not sure what software distributes this driver but it seems that might be the BlackBerry's Desktop Manager. Would it be possible for you to try uninstalling this application and see if this will resolve the USB issue with Fusion?

Regards,

Kamen

[markn456]

Karmen,

I have removed all the old 3rd party USB drivers and related files. I was able to locate a script designed to remove all legacy blackberry. I have verified that it's all gone now. I re-installed 11.5.6, which is still broken. I reinstalled 11.5.3 and verified it works. I have captured and uploaded a new support bundle from 11.5.6 and 11.5.3 for your review.

Regards,

-mark

[KamenGopin84]

Hi Mark,

Looking at the latest attached Fusion 11.5.6 support bundle from 2020-10-31: VMware Fusion Problem Report 2020-10-31 at 11.25.41.zip

In the support bundle there is a list of all the loaded kernel extensions: tmp/kexts.txt

   28    0 0xffffff7f8101b000 0x18000    0x18000    com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt (0.0.64) 9453C655-B796-0FB4-1F1C-19A9D87B5F67 <27 26 25 24 21 6 5 3 1>

It seems the "com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt" kext is still present on the system.

In the IORegistry dump (tmp/ioreg-i.txt) we see that the  "com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt" kext is still matching on USB Mass Storage devices:

    | |     +-o USB Device@14200000  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOUSBNub:IOUSBDevice, id 0x100000777, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (236 ms), retain 15>

    | |     | +-o AppleUSBInterface@0  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOUSBNub:IOUSBInterface, id 0x100000787, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (236 ms), retain 9>

    | |     |   +-o com_rim_BlackBerryMassStorageClass  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOSCSIProtocolInterface:IOSCSIProtocolServices:IOUSBMassStorageClass:com_rim_BlackBerryMassStorageClass, id 0x10000078c, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (224 ms), retain 9>

...

    | |     +-o Whistler WS1080  Scanner@14100000  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOUSBNub:IOUSBDevice, id 0x1000007b2, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (152 ms), retain 17>

    | |       +-o AppleUSBInterface@0  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOUSBNub:IOUSBInterface, id 0x1000007be, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (140 ms), retain 9>

    | |       | +-o com_rim_BlackBerryMassStorageClass  <class IORegistryEntry:IOService:IOSCSIProtocolInterface:IOSCSIProtocolServices:IOUSBMassStorageClass:com_rim_BlackBerryMassStorageClass, id 0x1000007c3, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (128 ms), retain 9>

To check if the com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt kernel extension is indeed removed and no longer matching on any devices you can execute the following command from the terminal:

kextstat | grep com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt

If the kernel extension is removed the aforementioned command should not output anything.

Regards,

Kamen

[markn456]

Kamen,

I ran the suggested grep and it returned nothing which I expected. I was planning on reinstalling Fusion 11.5.6 because I had reinstalled 11.5.3 because I needed to get some things done. Anyway, after I reinstalled 11.5.6, it is now working! I will try Fusion 12.x later or perhaps when the first update comes out. I believe we can close this case now.

Thanks so much for all the assistance and your patience in working through this with me.

Regards,

Mark

[markn456]

Kamen,

It appears when I reported it working it appears it was only a fluke. Again, 11.5.6 is not working and 11.5.3 is. I have again collected support bundles with 11.5.3 (working) and 11.5.6 (not working) can I get you to have another look? 

the bundles are:

VMware Fusion Problem Report 2020-11-10 at 07.44.45

VMware Fusion Problem Report 2020-11-10 at 08.03.21

Regards,

Mark

[KamenGopin84]

Hi Mark,

You seem to be hitting a different issue now.

Before, the symptom was that the VM was unable to open the device's interfaces. This was caused by a 3rd party kext (com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt) which was matching on the device's interfaces and not releasing them. Now, opening the device's interfaces succeeds but the VM is unable to communicate to the device.

The first issue (the one caused by the 3rd party kext) used to affect all Mass Storage devices. How about now? Does the new issue you are facing happen for all devices or just the Whistler WS1080 Scanner? 

Regarding the difference in behaviour between 11.5.6 and 11.5.3. In 11.5.5 we've rearchitected the USB stack to take full advantage of Apple's IOKit APIs so that we no longer need a kernel extension to capture USB devices from the MacOS host. Apparently, the issue affects only the new implementataion.

Regards,

Kamen

[Xinfeng111]

I have the same problem. Most of the portable hard drives now don't work on virtual machines of 11.5.5 or higher, but they do work on MacOS. USB of 11.5.3 is 3.0, and USB of 11.5.5 or later is 3.1. Is it related to this? The impact on use is very large, hope to solve as soon as possible

[markn456]

Kamen,

The issue I am having now impacts all three of my Whistler Scanners. While I saw these all as the same issue, it was not apparent until the "BlackBerry" issue was corrected which impacted any release that used the new USB stack API. 

So, now this is a new problem that is specifically related to Whistler devices. The Whistler issue is demonstrated in the most recent support bundles I uploaded. If you can help me get this resolved and I can move on to getting my Fusion 12.x with support installed and get macOS upgraded to Big Sur which Apple started pushing out yesterday.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mark

[DontWorri]

I am also having an issue connecting to a USB drive on Catalina from Fusion 15.5.5.  My VM is MacOs SnowLeopard. The problem drive is USB2 Mac OS Extended (Journaled).  I do NOT have the same problem with different APFS drive similarly connected via USB2 (although another problem is that it immensely slow).         I can mount the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive but strangely the file list is incomplete and even weirder still,  is that I get different results at different times. The Finder shows only partial list of contents, sometimes more complete than other times.  I cannot save to the drive via the VM.  I've check permissions on the drive itself and all seems to be fine and does not exhibit problems in the host.

[markn456]

Did this work okey for you on a previous release of Fusion? If so, what release were you using when it was working for you?

[roseb002]

I am seeing the same problem - when I try to use a USB SSD on my Windows 10 VM, I do not see the drive anymore.  It makes all the indications that it loaded up the drive, and on the Windows side, for a wile you can see it in the list of devices to eject, but then it goes away there and the windows device shows an error.  This started last year some time while I was on Fusion 11.x (from the looks of it, when I updated to 11.5.5) and I tried searching for the problem but did not find anything and didn't pursue it.  Since then, I have upgraded to Mac OS Big Sur.  When I did that, I was forced to upgrade Fusion to 12 (currently 12.1.0) and I still have the problem.  Reverting back to Catalina and  11.5.3 seems like an ordeal, so I hope this gets resolved soon.