VM not recognizing USB

[Leif Husman]

I added the usb "hardware" to my redhat VM but when I put either of my usb drives in the host machine "grabs" it and my VM goes into the background while my host XP machine says "open files?" etc. How do I get my host to ignore the USB drive and the VM to see it?

rK

[fred deakin]

Hi Lief,

You can eject the USB drive from your host (but leave it plugged in). On Windows, I think it is "remove device" (icon on Task Bar at the bottom of the screen).

You then have to make sure the USB device is connected to your VM.

Sometimes the VM automatically mounts the USB device to the Desktop.

To unmount from Desktop:

Right click on the removable drive icon and select unmount from the menu.

Or

you should be able to do this in the command line:

umount ~/Desktop/sdb1 (whatever LInux is calling your pen drive)

[Rich Simms]

You can also control VMware Server to capture or not capture the USB drive. See Step 2 of this Howto which can also be found on the Resources page of the web site:

[url]http://simms-teach.com/howtos/113-add-usb-to-vm.pdf[/url]

If your USB drive is "checked" VMware has it, if not checked Windows has it. This coupled with Fred's info above will give you the control you need over USB drives.

- Rich

[keivn dodd]

You can edit the auto run setting of XP so XP doesn't pop up the dialog box every time you insert a usb drive. Not sure if this will have any effect on which OS is capturing the drive. Did you check Removable Devices menu to see if it is check as connected?

[Leif Husman]

....The drive has been ejected from windows and it is "checked" in the VM control. It is not there on the VM. I'm using Fedora 9 VM and fdisk -l doesn't show it and it says /dev/sdb1 does not exist.

I had a ubuntu machine that saw it when I typed the "lsusb" but that doesn't work here.


rK

[Rich Simms]

Might be time to restart Windows and restart the VM. After it boots back up, insert the USB pen drive, capture it with VMware, then in Fedora 9 type dmesg and check the output for USB pen drive activity.

Double check:

1) That Windows no longer sees the USB device (open My Computer icon) after VMware captures it.
2) When you view the VM > Settings... for your VM, the USB controller must be present.

If you are using VMware Server 2.0 Beta there is a known problem sharing the same USB pen drive between VMs.

- Rich