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I am running Fedora as a hosted OS in a VMWare virtual machine environment, running VMWare 6.7.0 Update 3 (Build 14320388). I have managed to add a PCI-E graphics card which displays the Fedora desktop, but I cannot find any way of connecting a physical keyboard & mouse.

I am using a wireless keyboard and mouse which communicates via a USB dongle.

I have configured all of my USB ports as ‘passthrough’ but none of them seem to recognise the keyboard.

I have read various documents online that advise me to right click on the “USB configuration” inside the VMWare console, and enable keyboard and mouse, but I cannot seem to find that option anywhere.

My hardware is a Dell PowerEdge R710 and I have enabled all USB ports.

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  • Can you try a standard USB keyboard and USB Mouse to see if that works ?
    – anon
    Commented Jan 23, 2021 at 18:37
  • Try the procedures described in link1 and link2.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jan 23, 2021 at 20:23
  • John, unfortunately I don't have a spare keyboard available :-(
    – Klaus K
    Commented Jan 24, 2021 at 11:12
  • harrymc, I have set the vmx option, as described in link1 (step 3) but was unable to find the menu options described in steps 5 and 7. wrt link2, I'm not sure that this applies to my case, since the Linux desktop fills my entire screen - i.e. there is no option to click outside the window. Beside this, the whole idea of clicking outside the window seems irrelevant if I can't move the mouse pointer or click :-(\
    – Klaus K
    Commented Jan 24, 2021 at 11:16

1 Answer 1

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As noted previously, I had already performed the actions suggested in link1, as suggested by harrymc. Pleasingly I was able to do this directly from the VMWare web interface, as shown below. This saved me from the hassle of locating the .vmx configuration file on the VM host.

Allowing USB to support Human Interface Device (HID)

I had already previously allowed passthrough on the USB interface, so that it could be accessible to the hosted virtual machines. I had also had to do this to the PCI-e graphics card that I had plugged into the R710 riser, but that is another tale.

It turned out that the crucial step was to 'attach' my host USB interface to my virtual machine. Once again, this was something that was trivial to do using the VMWare web interface - see below. I added it as a PCI device, so I'm guessing that is how it is implemented inside the R710.

List of virtual hardware, including two PCI devices for graphics and USB

Curiously, I can only plug my keyboard/mouse dongle into the lower USB port on the back of the R710 - the upper port does not work, nor do either of the USB ports on the front of the blade, despite the fact that I have enabled them in the R710 BIOS.

As a minor addendum, I am pleased to confirm that the two USB ports on the front of the blade are working e.g. for memory sticks.

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