Ubuntu
vmware-player package

[edgy] vmware-player cannot see usb devices

Bug #62707 reported by Alex Murray
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
vmware-player (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Previously when I had vmware-player installed under Dapper, when using a virtual machine, vmware-player would display a list of the usb devices on my host machine which can then be connected to the virtual machine.

However, after performing a clean install of edgy, vmware-player does not display any usb devices. This used to work under dapper using this identical virtual machine, but under edgy it appears vmware is not seeing any of the usb devices, and so is not presenting them as available to connect to the virtual machine.

I have tried both edgy-i386 and amd64 but to no avail.

Revision history for this message
Philip Langdale (langdalepl) wrote :

You must mount /proc/bus/usb which is no longer done by default in Edgy - the player uses it for usb device detection and enumeration.

Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Ahh thanks for that. Muchly appreciated. Any chance this will be turned on (mounting of usbfs) automatically in the release of Edgy?

Revision history for this message
Philip Langdale (langdalepl) wrote :

Not for me to say. The situation of /proc/bus/usb vs (/dev/usb/usb + sysfs + hal) is unclear - the last word from the kernel driver maintainer was that /proc/bus/usb was not deprecated but everyone else seems to think it is. Go figure.

Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Well since it has not been officially deprecated, and one of the packages in the repos requires it to be mounted to work correctly, wouldn't it make sense to have it automounted from fstab as default?

Revision history for this message
Ajay (ajay-s-linux) wrote :

I am just adding my opinion here,

as only vmware seems to need it, it may make more sense to modify vmware-player, specially since its source code is available for modifications :)

Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

What part other than a small image library which was originally distributed by Red Hat as GPL is available as source code?
It is still a proprietary product - just because it is free (beer) doesn't make it Free (freedom).
VMWare need to make the modifications, OR distributors need to ensure it works correctly if they are going to distribute it. Perhaps a message could be displayed post installation that for VMWare Player to operate correctly usbfs must be mounted. This would seem logical if it not going to be enabled by default.

Revision history for this message
Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis) wrote :

During beta-phase usbfs is disabled in Ubuntu, so people are reminded to port their applications. For final release, usbfs will be reenabled again.

Changed in vmware-player:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
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