So I played with the ESXi server last night and for some reason I wanted to put the onboard USB controllers to PCI passthrough (DirectPath I/O). Bad idea!

The result is, that the I couldn’t access the setup via IPMI2.0 and even worse: all USB passthrough devices are no longer working.

No problem, I thought – I went to the settings on my Win XP VM which is running vSphere client and removed the checks in the shown above window. Reboot.

For my surprise, the devices where still there. I tried this 4 or 5 times. No success. Damn!

I was looking for a solution on Google, but without success. What I found is a little workaround. I guess I need to reinstall the ESXi onto the USB stick, but at the moment, I’m not in the mood.

The workaround put’s the devices back from the passthrough mode to the vmkernel. This works – until I have to reboot (luckily this system runs for months w/o a reboot). What you need is SSH access to the ESXi server.

Here’s my script that I’ve put into the root folder and made it accessible:

# cat clean
#!/bin/sh
vmkchdev -v 000:000:26.0
vmkchdev -v 000:000:29.0

# chmod +x clean
# ./clean

That’s all! Now I am able to remove the devices and can go on and use the USB devices.

Until the next reboot – this will work.

This is a workaround! Not a solution! So if anybody of my readers knows a better way – please – let me know!

PS. I’ve spend 2 1/2h’s on this crap – I wanted to use the time to finish the cabling on “Home Office 8.2″ and take some photos