ESXi USB passthrough not working for Windows 2012R2 guest

usbvmware-esxiwindows-server-2012-r2

A USB device (Feitian HID dongle) is physically attached to a VMWare ESXi host (5.1.0).
The USB dongle is configured in passthrough mode for a Windows 2012 R2 (VMWare Level 8) host.
The Windows host does not "see" it – it doesn't appear in device manager or in the removable devices list.

Same device on same host if configured for a Linux guest comes up in the lsbusb output.

Best Answer

Make sure that you have both a USB controller and the device itself added to the virtual machine in order to make the pass-thru option work.

It would be an easier setup though to not use hardware pass-thru. Instead make sure you have the proper USB controller on the virtual machine and VMware tools have been installed. VMware tools will provide the drivers needed for the controller. Once the virtual machine is up and running with these installed then just attach the USB device using the consoles control panel. You should have a listing of available devices to choose from.

Related Solutions

Linux – How to get USB devices working in VMware with Linux as the host, and WinXP as the guest

I had issues setting this up with Ubuntu Server 8.04 as well. The answer lay in this Ubuntu Launchpad entry. It turns out VMWare are using a very old method of scanning for USB devices. In Ubuntu this can be reenabled by editing /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh and uncommenting the following:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

After rebooting the VMWare web console successfully detected the USB devices. What you should see when logged into the VMWare Server web console is a small USB icon in the top menu on the far right. It is then a case of selecting your Windows VM, going up to the dropdown and selecting the USB device you want to attach to that VM.

Make sure you have added the USB controller virtual hardware device to the Windows VM.
I have not tested this with Intrepid, but it works fine with the latest release of Hardy (8.04LTS).

Linux – How to disable hiddev96 in linux (or tell it to ignore a specific device)

What is hiddev96, is that a device node name, as in /dev/hiddev96?

You can configure what device name is assigned to what device via udev configuration, look into file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules

I have not configured it for your particular case, but I have an entry stating to symlink device entry to a specific one for my needs,

# SE K530i
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", KERNEL=="ttyACM2", SYSFS{idProduct}=="d079", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0fce", SYMLINK="k530", MODE="666"

You can see how to match device by product id and vendor id from this.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to get USB devices working in VMware with Linux as the host, and WinXP as the guest

Linux – How to disable hiddev96 in linux (or tell it to ignore a specific device)

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