While I don’t run windows on any physical hardware, I have a VMWare windows xp guest on my laptop that I use for a couple of applications. One of which is the programming software for my Logitech Harmony remote.

In my recent laptop update to Ubuntu 7.10, VMWare Server lost the ability to pass through the USB bus to the guest. Fortunately, a quick search on the VMWare forums came up with the following:

Please open the following file: /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh by following command – gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Find the following lines:
#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

Unmark them so that look like this:
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

Restart and your usb devices will be recognised

This worked like a champ, and now I can do the rest of my pre thanksgiving tweaks on the remote. 🙂