Inspired by I-57

For reasons I don’t understand, if you’re running linux inside of Parallels on a mac, you can’t just add a usb flash drive and have it recognized.

However, you CAN make it work, you just have to work at it.

Here’s what works for me:

1. Create a new vm, point it at a knoppix cd.
2. Edit the USB controller settings and make sure it is NOT autocapturing devices
3. WITHOUT Parallels running, insert the usb stick.
4. Open the finder. If the usb stick is mounted, unmount it. It won’t work with it mounted.
5. Start your VM. At the knoppix prompt, enter “knoppix irqpoll”. You can add other settings, like “lang=us 2″
6. Let it boot
7. Now, pull down the devices menu, go to the usb sub menu, and capture your memory stick
8. Wait. Linux will auto discover the stick. it will throw out some errors about irq9 being ignored, and then capture the stick as a scsi device
9. Now you can use it as you want.