[Bug 35004] USB devices are not shown in /procu/bus/usb/ causing VMWare to fail to see them

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Public bug reported:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/35004

Affects: linux-meta linux-image-686 (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
       Assignee: Ben Collins
         Status: Unconfirmed

Description:
I am running VMWare 5.5.0 on Linux flash 2.6.15-18-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT
Thu Mar 9 15:29:22 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux from linux-image-686 version
2.6.15.17.

Using Windows XP as the guest OS under Ubuntu, I'm unable to detect new
USB devices being connected to the system.

According to the documentation, VMWare looks in /proc/bus/usb/ for
devices. On my system, this directory exists but is always empty no
matter which devices I plug into the system. We do have a
/sys/bus/usb/devices/ which appears to be populated but I don't think
that is in the same format as the old /proc/bus/usb/

Either VMWare needs to be updated to support the /sys/bus/usb/
interface, or we need to figure out how to populate /proc/bus/usb/

Ben, please figure out who to subscribe from VMWare it would be good to get independent verification of the issue. I will in the mean time download VMWare 5.5.1 and see if this fixes the problem.

Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'linux-image'; however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.