VMware Communities
outsider33
Contributor
Contributor

Workstation linux: can't see USB devices or hard drives

With Vmware Workstation on linux can't see usb devices or drives, only the default stuff:

  • CD/DVD SATA
  • Network Adapter
  • Sound card

But can't see my Toshiba or Sandisk USb or whatever. Tried running on ubuntu 18.04 the command but throws an error

sudo mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb -o devmode=0666

mount: /proc/bus/usb: mount point does not exist.

Can you please provide some help or support how to fix it?

Workstation is latest version.

7 Replies
outsider33
Contributor
Contributor

Here's a screenshot:

vmware-workstation-linux-no-usb-devices.png

On windows 10 of course it shows all devices.

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RDPetruska
Leadership
Leadership

Silly basic question, but I should ask...  Does the guest VM have a USB controller added to its settings?

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outsider33
Contributor
Contributor

It must, because running the virtual machine on a Windows host instead of linux one makes USB devices appear properly.

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HackerKitty
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have exact the same problem as you have.

I had a perfectly working Windows guest in VMWare Player 14 on Ubuntu 17.10 host.

But after upgrading to 18.04, USB connection was completely missing from the puldown list.

1) I removed VMWare 14 and tried to re-install, but the installation for both ver. 14 and ver. 12.5 got hung and never completed.

The log file shows error related to

"USB Arbitration Service Version 17.1.3."

2) I tried a clean installation of Ubuntu 18.04.

But I could not install neither VMWare ver. 14 nor ver. 12.5.

The log file shows error related to

"USB Arbitration Service Version 17.1.3."

I am currently revert back to Ubuntu 17.10 with VMWare player 14.

I hope smeone find a solution for this problem before the support for Ubuntu 17.10 expires.

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outsider33
Contributor
Contributor

Just by change, could you test it with Debian or Fedora?

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HackerKitty
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Par your request, I tried VMWare 14 on the freshly installed MX Linux 17.1, which is based on Debian, not Ubuntu.

VMWare was installed without any error but when I tried to open pre-existing VMs, I got a following error message:

Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.

Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.

Now, it looks like a problem not only in Ubuntu, but also in other Debian derivatives as well.

UPDATE:

I retried upgrading Ubuntu 17.10 to 18.04 since the automatic upgrade notification just arrived.

After this update, VMware 14 worked normally and I got no error message.

I suspect I upgraded to a beta version of 18.04 by mistake.

I think O.P. could also try upgrading to 18.04 to see if that helps.

UPDATE2:

By unistalling and installing VMware 14, I managed to make it work in mxLinux as well.

outsider33
Contributor
Contributor

Finally uninstalling vmware workstation and reinstalling it on the linux host fixed the problem, now all usb devices appear. No idea why didn't work the first time.

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