There is a common problem to get USB support running in VirtualBox on a debian or ubuntu linux host system. If there is a Windows XP (maybe also other system) installed as the guest system, the USB devices will be shown in the VirtualBox menue – but they are disabled. The devices are recognized but the reason for the disabled function is the unsufficient permission.
In this post, I will explain how to solve this problem by a few tricks.
You need to open the file mountkernfs.sh
# vi /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh
Inside this file, look for this line:
domount proc "" /proc proc -onodev,noexec,nosuid
Please insert directly below the line above this following statement. You need to replace xxx with the groupID of the vboxuser. You can find this ID in your /etc/groups file
domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs -onodev,noexec,nosuid,devgid=xxx,devmode=664
Furthermore, open your fstab file:
# vi /etc/fstab
and add this line as the very first statement. Replace xxx like above.
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=122,busmode=0775,devgid=xxx,devmode=0664 0 0
That’s it. Have a lot of fun. Please don’t hestitate to add any comments to this post.
mk_michael
August 30th, 2009
I’m actually using Debian Etch and it works very fine
mk_michael
August 30th, 2009
Hello Kevin,
my mountkernfs.sh looks like:
#
# Mount proc filesystem on /proc
#
domount proc “” /proc proc -onodev,noexec,nosuid
domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs onodev,noexec,nosuid,devgid=122,devmode=664
my fstab looks like:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=122,busmode=0775,devgid=122,devmode=0664 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
Kevin
August 30th, 2009
Apparently usbfs is not used after ubuntu 7.10 so this technique will not work with the latest releases of Ubuntu.
Kevin
August 30th, 2009
# sudo VirtualBox does not work on my laptop with Ubuntu 9.04. Virtualbox acts like it has just been installed and does not see any of the VMs already installed.
Editing mountkernfs.sh and fstab which in Ubuntu should be done using sudo gedit didn’t work either. First I pasted the entire group id for vboxusers and then just the group id # and neither worked. An example of what it should look like would help this relative newbie.
Luciano
August 20th, 2009
Hi,
I have a simple ideia…
Just type on shell with root privileges…
# sudo VirtualBox
Thanks for the help… if you don’t say that the problem was the privileges, i will never know.