Cannot connect USB device to VMware Workstation 12.5

Question

I want to have the USB HDD at /dev/sdc accessible to VMware Workstation 12.5 (Manjaro Linux host).

Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center says:

On Linux hosts, Workstation Pro uses the USB device file system to connect to USB devices. If the USB device file system is not located in /proc/bus/usb, you must mount the USB file system to that location.

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Important Do not attempt to add a USB drive device node directory, for example, /dev/sda, to the virtual machine as a hard disk.

I try to mount /proc/bus/usb as reccommended (same link as above):

[tara ~]# mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb
mount: mount point /proc/bus/usb does not exist
[tara ~]# mkdir /proc/bus/usb
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/proc/bus/usb’: No such file or directory
[tara ~]# ls /proc/bus
input  pci
[tara ~]# uname -a
Linux tara 4.8.15-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 15 22:22:45 UTC 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[tara ~]#

In my net trawling, it seems that /proc/bus/usb was removed in Linux kernel 3.5.

Surely it is possible to connect a USB device to VMware Workstation - how is it done?

Answer 1

Run vmware-usbarbitrator:

# vmware-usbarbitrator

To see what it is going on behind the scenes, run:

# vmware-usbarbitrator --kill && vmware-usbarbitrator -f

You may need to close and re-open vmware to see the changes.