No USB in Player 5.0.1, linux 3.7.3

[clive12]

I recently upgraded to Player 5.0.1 (894247.x86_64). The guest no longer sees any host USB devices. The Host is arch linux, kernel 3.7.3.

In the Virtual machine->Removable Devices there is no USB option at all. The Virtual Machines Setting have a USB Controller present

set with "Automatically connect new devices". I've tried USB compat 1.1 and 2.0. with no change.

I've upgraded vmtools - no change

I've tried different USB devices in the host but no sign of any host side USB in VM. Other removable devices (eg CD) work fine.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

Clive

[Simon_Rodan]

I have the same issue. 5.0.1 build-894247, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux kernel 3.2.0-36-generic

[clive12]

I was wondering if this was related to the kernel move of /proc/bus/usb to /dev/bus/usb. There seems to have been a lot of issues in the past with that. However if so its only indirectly. USB on the host side is now controlled by a process /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator.

It seems my problem was that this had not been started, mainly because the script that starts it had not been installed. However the actual executable was installed OK. So I tracked down the script in the bundle file and ran it. USB now seems to be working perfectly!

In case anyone else needs this..  You can check whether its runnng with

% ps ax | grep usb
2164 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator
3296 pts/25   S+     0:00 grep usb

And extract it from the bundle with

VMware-Player-5.0.1-894247.x86_64.bundle -x temp

cp -p temp/vmware-usbarbitrator/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator .
chmod +x vmware-USBArbitrator

./vmware-USBArbitrator start

Obviously you will want to move that somewhere sensible....

Cheers

Clive

[kevinpt]

I did get things working by running vmware-usbarbitrator start (No need to extract it from the bundle it's already installed). Presumably the daemon is not being set up properly in the Debian init scripts. I haven't looked into what is different from a fresh install when it is running.