Unable to mount the USB drive to the Virtual Machine.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

•  The direct path I/O USB device is not being detected by the application running on the guest OS. When the USB device is connected using PCI passthrough, the device appears in the Device Manager; however, the application still fails to recognize it.

•  We can observed below error from the host logs. 

var/run/log/usb.log
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. usbarb[2231341]: USBArb: VMware USB Arbitration Service Version 20.5.0
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. usbarb[2231341]: USBGL: Failed to open '/vmfs/devices/char/vmkdriver/usbdevices'. Error(0x2): No such file or directory.
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. usbarb[2231341]: USBArbL: No USB enumerator!
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. usbarb[2231341]: USBArbServiceP: Early backend initialization failed.
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. usbarb[2231341]: USBArbServiceP: usbArbitrator exits with code(1).

var/run/log/vmkernel.log 
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. cpu54:2098375)ALERT: Warning: /vmfs/devices/char/vmkdriver/usbpassthrough not found
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. cpu30:2098290)Jumpstart plugin usbarbitrator activated.
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.cpu36:2101624)ALERT: Warning: /vmfs/devices/char/vmkdriver/usbpassthrough not found

var/run/log/hostd.log
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. info hostd[2107034] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=esxcli-14-4f68 user=root] Activation finished; <<52cca506-10e2-bc28-7f17-74bdbee295a6, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 8307'>, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 31726'>>, ha-cli-handler-hardware-usb-passthrough-device, vim.EsxCLI.hardware.usb.passthrough.device.list>
-->       "Error listing usb devices"
YY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. info hostd[2107034] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.ha-eventmgr] Event 1905 : Issue detected on hostfqdn.XXXX.XXX.XXX.XXX in ha-datacenter: Warning: /vmfs/devices/char/vmkdriver/usbpassthrough not found.

 

Cause

• The USB subsystem or drivers on the ESXi host are not correctly loaded or initialized
• The path /vmfs/devices/char/vmkdriver/usbdevices is missing due to host configuration or version issues.
• USB devices are not detected or supported on the host hardware.

 

Resolution

• Check if there is a VIB available for the USB device that might provide necessary driver support.

connnect to ESXi host SSH and use esxcli software vib list. 

• Ensure USB controllers are enabled and no hardware-level restrictions are blocking detection.
• If the issue persist please engage Hardware Vendor.

Additional Information

A USB device does not function in the virtual machine.