Welcome …

Posted on

VMWare: Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

This article describes how to connect a USB device to a vm in ESXi – for example a storage device, camera, USB handset etc. etc. Whilst previously not possible, since ESXi 5.0 this is now reality, much to the relief of many, many people!

1. Add a VM USB Controller

Firstly, your VM needs to have a USB controller; this is added as standard to most new virtual machines but if one is not present then we need to add it – open your VM settings and click the “Add” button:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Choose “USB Controller” and click “Next”; when prompted for the controller type, choose “EHCI+UHCI” for best compatibility or “xHCI” for USB 3.0 support. Note: xHCI USB 3.0 is only supported with Linux VMs currently – see this documentation for further details.

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Once complete, you should see something akin to the following in your VM properties:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Excellent! Now let’s add a USB device to our VM:

2. Add a USB Device to the VM

Insert a USB device into one of the ports on your ESXi host. For this example I have used a Sandisk storage device. Open your VM machine properties and once again, click on “Add Hardware.” This time, choose “USB Device”: if your device has been correctly recognised by your ESXi host then it will show up on the next screen:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi     —–>       Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Click “Next,” “Finish” and lastly “OK” to complete the reconfiguration of the VM. Congratulations! Your USB device is now added.

3. Mount the Storage Device (*nix Only)

If you have just added a storage device to a Windows VM then you should see it pop up in explorer shortly. If you are on Linux / Unix / FreeBSD etc then you will need to mount your drive. Firstly we will need to find out what ID it has been assigned by the operating system – the easiest way to do this is to check the last entries in “dmesg” after adding the device:


[1546647.937025] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci_hcd
[1546648.363146] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=5408
[1546648.363152] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[1546648.363157] usb 1-1: Product: U3 Titanium
[1546648.363160] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: SanDisk Corporation
[1546648.363164] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 000015E96A63058A
[1546648.364943] scsi11 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[1546649.369282] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk U3 Titanium 3.21 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[1546649.373306] scsi 11:0:0:1: CD-ROM SanDisk U3 Titanium 3.21 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[1546649.374503] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
[1546649.399562] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] 8015505 512-byte logical blocks: (4.10 GB/3.82 GiB)
[1546649.403475] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 8x/40x writer xa/form2 cdda tray
[1546649.403817] sr 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
[1546649.404505] sr 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 5
[1546649.417867] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
[1546649.417873] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[1546649.422634] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.422800] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.451967] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.452074] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.480289] sde: sde1
[1546649.506074] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.506184] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.506332] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk

The most relevant part is the line reading “[1546649.480289] sde: sde1” – this tells us that the disk has been assigned the descriptor “sde” and the single partition on it “sde1“.

From here we can do a standard *nix mount command and access it normally – in this example I am mounting the newly added sde1 device to a pre-existing directory “/mnt/usb”:

root@merlin:~# mount /dev/sde1 /mnt/usb

We can check the operation has been successful by issuing the “mount” command on its own

root@merlin:~# mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
...
...
...
/dev/sde1 on /mnt/usb type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

Job done! If this has been of interest to you, check out some of the other articles in the VMWare category!

Related posts:

Posted on

Linux: PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Part 3

PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Squid Configuration

This article in the series walks us through using webmin and configure the squid proxy server to accept and forward connections for clients.

1. Access the interface on https://192.168.101.6:10000

Squid Proxy

2. On the left-hand side control panel, locate “Unused Modules,” expand this and scroll down to “Squid Proxy Server.” You will see the following error message – click on the circled link to adjust the module parameters:

Squid Proxy

3. Change all references to “squid3” to “squid” as shown in the circled fields below, click “Save” when finished.

Squid Proxy

4. As squid denies all connections by default, we need to allow users access. In this example we’re going to allow *all* users to access the proxy – you can of course create access lists based on users / groups etc. but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Click on the “Access Control” icon to continue.

Squid Proxy

Navigate to the “Proxy Restrictions” tab and click the “Deny” link next to “all”:

Squid Proxy

Now simply change the “Deny” to “Allow” and don’t forget to click “Apply changes” on the top right-hand side of the screen!

Squid Proxy        Squid Proxy

Job done! You can now check that you have access to the proxy by configuring your browser to use a proxy and then browsing to a website, e.g. www.whatsmyip.org. Here you should see the public IP address of your router.

Now – let’s get anonymised!

 

No related posts.

Posted on

Linux: PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Part 2

PrivateInternetAccess Using OpenVPN and Squid Proxy – Software Installation

In this article we are going to run through the Debian, OpenVPN and Squid proxy software installation. In this tutorial we are installing it on a virtual machine in an ESXi environment but it can obviously be installed on any PC, virtual or otherwise. We are using a dual-core CPU with 2GB of RAM which is more than enough for a light-user proxy.

Let’s get started!

1. Download the netinstall iso, burn it to CD/DVD if necessary and boot. Run through the install and make sure to specify your static IP. You only need a minimal installation, no desktop manager so select the options as shown:

OpenVPN and Squid Proxy - Software Installation

2. Once installed and logged in, update the apt repositories with apt-get update:

OpenVPN and Squid Proxy - Software Installation

3. Install the Webmin software

  • Install the required dependencies:
  • apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python
  • Answer “y” when prompted to download and debian will do the rest.
  • Download the webmin package and instal with dpkg:
  • OpenVPN and Squid Proxy - Software Installation
  • dpkg -i webmin-current.deb:
  • OpenVPN and Squid Proxy - Software Installation

4. Install the OpenVPN software:

  • apt-get install openvpn

5. Install squid proxy software:

  • apt-get install squid

Now we’re all installed, it’s time for the configuration.

No related posts.