(Note: I am sharing what I did to get this working for me on Ubuntu® (various releases) and VMware™ (v1.0.x); your results may vary. I do not cover sound devices or other issues. If you want help with that, Contact Us)

By now you are probably aware of the low cost VOIP solution called magicJack™ (competitors: Ooma and TK6000): A USB dongle device that gives you a US phone number and unlimited, "free" calls to the US, Canada and Puerto Rico for about $20 USD/year.

Well, based on their ongoing efforts to thwart usage of ATA devices with their service, chances are likely that you may need to use magicJack under a Microsoft® Windows® Guest on VMware™ (like when you are on the road with a Laptop, or if you are like many and just HATE running Windoze as your native OS).

Here is how I have run magicJack on a Windows XP Guest under VMware Server on Ubuntu:

• Your Linux distro (VMware host) needs to mount USBFS to /proc/bus/usb
(This is usually done automatically in Ubuntu)
• As root, do:

mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb

(You will probably have to reboot the virtual machine to have access to the USB devices after issuing this command.)
• If the Linux distro you are using as your VMware host does not automatically mount the USB devices at boot time, you will need to add the mount to your /etc/fstab:

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto 0 0

• If this line is already in /etc/fstab, it could be that the "noauto" option is set in the 4th column. If that is the case, change it to "auto"

Now for the rest:

• When you plug in the magicJack, 1 of 2 things should happen (after a few seconds):
• If your cursor is clicked in the "Host" Linux environment when you plug it in (i.e., not clicked on the Windows Guest VM), you should see one (possibly two) devices pop up on the desktop/get automounted.
• For me, I see "CD-ROM Disc" on the Ubuntu desktop with mount point:

/dev/scd1 on /media/MAGICJACK__ type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000,utf8)

(note the two underscores after MAGICJACK)

• Go to your VMware Server Console menu
• Select "Removable Devices"
• Slide down to "USB Devices"
• You should be able to Enable:
  • "Tiger Jet Network USB device", and
  • "YMAX Communications Corp MagicJack"
• once you do that, you should hear the familiar USB-has-been-plugged-in-to-Windows notification sound (assuming you have sound working in your VM!), see the magicJack USB device being recognized, and magicJack softphone should start after about a minute!
• If your cursor is in your Windows Guest environment when you plug in magicJack, you should hear the familiar Windows USB notification sound (assuming you have sound working in your VM!) and see the Windows USB device recognition happen and the launching of the magicJack softphone.
• Occasionally, the softphone doesn't launch automatically and you may have to doubleclick the magicJack executable manually to get it started.

And now you can use your magicJack on your Windows VMware Guest!