VMWare USB Problems

[zeveck]

So...I am trying to use a VM as a test machine for software interacting with a Smart Card Reader. The SCR is currently connected to one of the host's USB ports.

My initial attempts at bridging the host USB to a guest OS proved somewhat annoying since:

1) Every time I started the VM I had to manually go to VM -> Removable Device -> USB Devices and select the device.

2) Every time I shutdown the VM the host would reacquire the device, which made it so that I had to tell the host to "safely remove" the device before I could have the VM acquire it again.

I solved the later problem by disabling the device in the host's hardware profile. This made it so that the host never tried to acquire the device, but VMware could still see it. This eliminated problem 2.

Problem 1 still proved much too annoying, but this lovely forum came to the rescue by alerting me that you can actually manually update the config file to have USB devices automount.

Which I did by adding the line:

usb.autoConnect.device0 = "0x04E6:0x1001"

This works great...for awhile...

But it seems that I cannot go more than a few hours/resets without VMware completely losing the USB device and being unable to find it on boot or through the menu. What's worse, the host cannot seem to find it either (it doesn't even show up as disabled) unless I reboot the system. After the reboot everything works again.

I have been loving VMware, but this incredibly flaky handling of USB devices is troubling.

Is this a known issue? Are there any robust solutions?

The host machine is a dual Xeon with 3G of RAM running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition w/ SP1. The guest OS is running the same.

 

[Chacalinc]

what vmware edition? workstation? gsx?

what the error log says?

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[zeveck]

VMWare Workstation 5.0.0 build-13124

Where would I find the error log?

 

[Chacalinc]

take a look to:

http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/en...mFueX4mcF9zb3J0X2J5PWRmbHQmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[Chacalinc]

Disabling Virtual Machine Logging

To disable logging for a single virtual machine, add the following entry to your virtual machine configuration file (.vmx):
logging = FALSE

The virtual machine will start up from then on without a log file. Keep in mind that if you require support from VMware at some later time, we will often ask for that log file for examination, so this setting may need to be removed.
Changing the Log File Location for Linux Hosts

For Linux host machines, add the following line to your virtual machine configuration file (.vmx):
log.filename = "/tmp/vm1.log"

In the above line, the log file for this virtual machine would be written to /tmp, and would be named vm1.log.

Warning: Do not use "/dev/null" as the log file name. The log.filename option does not interact well with /dev/null and will damage the /dev/null node if you configure your virtual machine this way.
Changing the Log File Location on Windows Hosts

For Windows host machines, add the following line to your virtual machine configuration file (.vmx):
log.filename="c:\tmp\vm1.log"

In the above line, the log file would be written into the C:\tmp directory, and the log file would be named vm1.log.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[zeveck]

I cannot find any notable errors in the log files. They are rather large to just post the whole thing...

...are suggestions as to what I might be looking for?

 

[zeveck]

The major difference between a log where the system failed to find the USB and a log where it worked is just that the one where it worked contains these lines:

...
Jul 12 10:59:23: vmx| USB: Found USB device 1254:4097
Jul 12 10:59:23: vmx| Connecting USB device "SCM Microsystems USB device" by matched ID
Jul 12 10:59:23: vmx| USB: Connecting device 0xe310001204e61001
Jul 12 10:59:23: vmx| VMXVmdbLoadUsbDevices: New set of 1 USB devices
...
Jul 12 11:03:59: vmx| USB: Disconnecting device 0xe310001204e61001
...

Other than that all of the lines related to "USB" are rather similar.