I was wondering if this was related to the kernel move of /proc/bus/usb to /dev/bus/usb. There seems to have been a lot of issues in the past with that. However if so its only indirectly. USB on the host side is now controlled by a process /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator.
It seems my problem was that this had not been started, mainly because the script that starts it had not been installed. However the actual executable was installed OK. So I tracked down the script in the bundle file and ran it. USB now seems to be working perfectly!
In case anyone else needs this.. You can check whether its runnng with
% ps ax | grep usb
2164 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator
3296 pts/25 S+ 0:00 grep usb
And extract it from the bundle with
VMware-Player-5.0.1-894247.x86_64.bundle -x temp
cp -p temp/vmware-usbarbitrator/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator .
chmod +x vmware-USBArbitrator
./vmware-USBArbitrator start
Obviously you will want to move that somewhere sensible....
Cheers
Clive