Ubuntu, VMWare and accessing the iPhone

Turns out a bit of extra work is required in order to access my iPhone under VMWare when the host OS is Ubuntu.

The first problem I had was related to the usb audio trying to add my iPhone as a mic device. The simple fix is to add snd_usb_audio module to the blacklist although if your computer does have a usb audio device this will cause it to stop working. To add the snd_usb_audio to the blacklist under Ubuntu edit '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf' and add

blacklist snd_usb_audio

After that is done it's just a matter of doing an `rmmod snd_usb_audio` if it has already been loaded.

The next problem was keeping the hald/dbus from trying to load and mount the iPhone as a camera device. A couple of rules added to hald policies will fix this problem. In Ubuntu create the file '/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-iphone.fdi' with the following content.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.product" string="iPhone 3G">
       <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

NOTE:The string value needs to be the exact same as found in `hal-device`, to find the exact string try running the following command while the iPhone is plugged into the computer:

$ hal-device | grep iPhone
 usb_device.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)
 info.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)

Posted by Will on Jul 06, 2009