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#1 2012-08-27 21:51:58

blackapple
Member
Registered: 2012-08-27
Posts: 2

[SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

This is my first post in the Arch Forums in the 5 years I have been using Arch as I usually can research my problem well enough and find a solution but this one has me stumped.

I was running VMware Player 4.0.4 and had no problems with connecting USB devices on Arch 3.4.9-1 on my ThinkPad W530.

I decided to upgrade to VMware Workstation 9. Following VMware's documentation they state to remove incompatible VMware products which includes VMware Player before proceeding with the instillation. I removed Player and all of its configuration files.

I followed the VMware Arch Wiki installation instructions when I installed Workstation 9.0.0 build-812388. Everything went smoothly except that VMware will no longer recognize USB devices. I followed the Wiki again attempting to solve the USB problem and extracted the workstation bundle to a temporary location to then copy  vmware-usbarbitrator to rc.d.

$ ls -l /etc/rc.d/vmware*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   18 Aug 27 14:54 /etc/rc.d/vmware -> /etc/init.d/vmware
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1845 Aug 27 14:55 /etc/rc.d/vmwared
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2387 Aug 27 15:35 /etc/rc.d/vmware-USBArbitrator
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   37 Aug 27 14:54 /etc/rc.d/vmware-workstation-server -> /etc/init.d/vmware-workstation-server 

I started the vmware-USBArbitrator daemon flollowed by the vmware daemon.

$ sudo rc.d start vmware-USBArbitrator

$ sudo rc.d start vmware
Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                             done
   Virtual machine communication interface                             done
   VM communication interface socket family                            done
   Blocking file system                                                done
   Virtual ethernet                                                    done
   VMware Authentication Daemon                                        done
   Shared Memory Available                                             done 

Even after this VMware will not recognize USB devices.

Anyone have any thoughts of what might be going wrong?

Last edited by blackapple (2012-09-04 23:21:53)

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#2 2012-08-29 17:52:05

kaldyr
Member
From: Washington State
Registered: 2012-08-29
Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

I just ran into the exact same issue.  I had vmplayer 4.x.x working on kernel 3.4.9 by loading vmware-USBArbitrator before vmware.  I upgraded to player 5.0.0 and kernel 3.5.3-1 and applied the fedora patch.  I extracted the new vmware-USBArbitrator out of the bundle and loaded it before vmware and I can't get it to register any usb devices to the VM. 

On an interesting note...

# vmware-usbarbitrator --info -f
VTHREAD initialize main thread 2 "usbArb" pid 16120
Segmentation fault

Edit:
It looks like the binary /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator provided with vmware workstation 9 / player 5 is seg faulting on execution.  The startup script we moved into /etc/rc.d/vmware-USBArbitrator is just calling this binary and not displaying errors.

running --help and -v options will not crash, but all other options do.  Seems like we need to take this to VMware.

# /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator -v
VMware USB Arbitration Service Version 10.1.14

I'll start poking around there and report back.

Last edited by kaldyr (2012-08-29 20:56:16)


Obviously you're not a golfer...

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#3 2012-08-30 12:34:47

Bullfrog
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

I have also experienced this problem. The vmware-USBArbitrator daemon will not run, resulting in having no USB devices available to the guests.

I look forward to hearing the resolution if you are able to find one.

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#4 2012-09-04 20:20:35

ruata
Member
Registered: 2012-09-04
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

It went to infinite loop in tring to find distribution by opening /etc/arch-release /etc/gentoo-release /etc/redhat-release etc. and died with EMFILE (Too many open files)
Try this sudo strace -ostrace.log vmware-usbarbitrator -f

Just add something to /etc/arch-release e.g. 2012.08 it's fixed the problem at least for me smile

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#5 2012-09-04 20:39:03

Bullfrog
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

ruata wrote:

It went to infinite loop in tring to find distribution by opening /etc/arch-release /etc/gentoo-release /etc/redhat-release etc. and died with EMFILE (Too many open files)
Try this sudo strace -ostrace.log vmware-usbarbitrator -f

Just add something to /etc/arch-release e.g. 2012.08 it's fixed the problem at least for me smile

@ruata: Thank you very much! I can confirm that your solution worked for me. After creating the file /etc/arch-release and adding '2012.08' without the quotes, the vmware-USBArbitrator service starts successfully!

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#6 2012-09-04 22:57:28

blackapple
Member
Registered: 2012-08-27
Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

ruata wrote:

It went to infinite loop in tring to find distribution by opening /etc/arch-release /etc/gentoo-release /etc/redhat-release etc. and died with EMFILE (Too many open files)
Try this sudo strace -ostrace.log vmware-usbarbitrator -f

Just add something to /etc/arch-release e.g. 2012.08 it's fixed the problem at least for me smile

@ruata: Thank you! This solution work for me also!

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#7 2012-09-05 02:27:43

BxS
Member
From: Portugal
Registered: 2009-04-05
Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

I've been using VMware 9 since it came out and never had any problem with USB, I also don't have any /etc/arch-release dir at all...

One more mystery for X-files smile

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#8 2012-09-05 06:54:49

ruata
Member
Registered: 2012-09-04
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

This is not mystery. It is a bug in vmware-usbarbitrator. The problem is empty /etc/arch-release file - vmware-usbarbitrator can't work correctly in this case.
I know that if you remove it this will help, but some programs won't use some arch specific behavior may be vmware-usbarbitrator also switch to some generic behavior
That's why I decided to add something looked like version to this file, but it'll be enough that this file isn't empty. Just press enter and save it.

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#9 2012-09-05 13:01:43

BxS
Member
From: Portugal
Registered: 2009-04-05
Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

ruata wrote:

This is not mystery. It is a bug in vmware-usbarbitrator. The problem is empty /etc/arch-release file - vmware-usbarbitrator can't work correctly in this case.
I know that if you remove it this will help, but some programs won't use some arch specific behavior may be vmware-usbarbitrator also switch to some generic behavior
That's why I decided to add something looked like version to this file, but it'll be enough that this file isn't empty. Just press enter and save it.

Sorry to disappoint you but I also tested with an empty /etc/arch-release file and works just fine, so this is not that simple there's something else at play here.

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#10 2012-09-11 15:13:09

travis.hegner
Member
From: Michigan
Registered: 2012-03-01
Posts: 1
Website

Re: [SOLVED] VMware Workstation 9 USB Problem

blackapple wrote:
ruata wrote:

It went to infinite loop in tring to find distribution by opening /etc/arch-release /etc/gentoo-release /etc/redhat-release etc. and died with EMFILE (Too many open files)
Try this sudo strace -ostrace.log vmware-usbarbitrator -f

Just add something to /etc/arch-release e.g. 2012.08 it's fixed the problem at least for me smile

@ruata: Thank you! This solution work for me also!

I can confirm adding a newline to this file works for me as well! Thanks!

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