Hi,
Have the same problem here:


This is great work!! awesome!
Any chance to have the files recompiled for ESXi 5.5?
Thanks!!

I'm not certain Trick is very active at the moment. He did list very detailed steps and build environment setup here.. viewtopic.php?f=34&t=4340

Thanks! I appreciate it..
I tried and got lost, I could not do it... not very good on this..

Yes it will take some time to setup and build. And then there is the issue to debug. Without some programming knowledge it will be difficult to manage. Unfortunately I no longer have a build environment setup, or I would attempt to assist. Even then I'm not certain I could be of any help as it was Trick who handled all the coding. :-/

hi @Trickstarter, thank for your hard work! could you update this driver for the esxi 5.5? or maybe source code for the current version?

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and also to ESXi... I found this thread after quite some googling and I think the drivers you developed (it looks like great work!) might solve my problem. Unfortunately I did not succeed, and I hope you might help me.

My setup is an Intel NUC (DC53427HYE) that I also managed to get running with its builtin nic, but I need a second nic, so that must be a USB adapter. The one I have has the ASIX chipset, so I landed here. Also it seems hard to find USB nics that don't use this chipset.

I described my problem in more detail in a seperate thread in the "Install Problems and Questions" forum

Any help on this would be highly welcome... thanks!

Andy

I have a couple of MAC Mini's with the Startech devices (Use the same chipset and drivers)
When I try to load the drivers:
esxcli software acceptance set --level CommunitySupported
vmkload_mod usb
vmkload_mod usbnet
vmkload_mod /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024
I get:
vmkload_mod: Can not load module /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024: Invalid or missing namespace.

Can anyone help with the commands and sequence I need to get it going please?

I have been trying to get a USB ethernet device working on my MAC Mini ESXi 5.5 machines. I’m nearly there but I have a couple of issues.

I run the following commands:

esxcli software acceptance set --level CommunitySupported


vmkload_mod -s /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024

/vmfs/volumes/aa1adf2e-8fe8c907 # vmkload_mod /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024
vmkload_mod: Can not load module /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024: Invalid or missing namespace


/vmfs/volumes/aa1adf2e-8fe8c907 # vmkload_mod -s /vmfs/volumes/ISO/usbnetvz024
vmkload_mod module information
input file: /vmfs/volumes/aa1adf2e-8fe8c907/usbnetvz024
Version: Version 1.0-3vmw, Build: 920308, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Feb 16 2013
License: GPL
Name-space: com.vmware.usbnet#9.2.1.0
Required name-spaces:
com.vmware.usb#9.2.1.0
com.vmware.driverAPI#9.2.0.0
com.vmware.vmkapi#v2_0_0_0
Parameters:
skb_mpool_max: int
Maximum attainable private socket buffer memory pool size for the driver.
skb_mpool_initial: int
Driver's minimum private socket buffer memory pool size.
heap_max: int
Maximum attainable heap size for the driver.
heap_initial: int
Initial heap size allocated for the driver.
msg_level: int
Override default message level

Can you help with what I have to do to fix the Namespace error?

so from the looks of this thread no one has successfully gotten this to work on ESXi 5.5?

I've recently looked back into this and it turns out the driver that @Trickerstarter wrote a couple of years back was specifically for ESXi 5.1 and if you try to load this on ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 host, it will fail the namespace dependency check with the following error:


Both ESXi 5.5/6.0 include a newer namespace version, ESXi 6.0 uses 9.2.3.0. For this to work, a new version would need to be compiled using the respective ESXi OSS packages. The other challenge that I've found is that it seems there were some amount of non-trivial code changes to the existing ax88179 driver packages to get this working. I've not found the diff of those changes anywhere on this thread, so I assume those would also be needed.

I just did a recent write up here Working USB Ethernet Adapter (NIC) for ESXi on this topic since I was interested to confirm and see which particular USB Ethernet Adapter actually worked with ESXi. A bit of bread crumb from the VMware Community Forums (VMTN) lead me back to this forum and tried to put the pieces together.

If there's anyone familiar with the changes, feel free to hit me up as I'll try to see if I can build a newer version of the driver, but without the explicit changes from Trickstarter, it might be a bit difficult.