I've been fighting with Slackware 13, Hal, flash drive and VirtualBox and I've managed to get totally lost.

I added myself to the plugdev group; when I plug a flash drive into a USB port, Hal seems to see it (damned if I can figure out where the the thing is though) because it pops up a little window that shows it. What I really want to do is copy files on and off the thing to transfer them to XP running in VirtualBox (XP does not see the drive and do its "new hardware" song and dance) -- mostly I'd just be happy if I could figure out how to access the blasted thing from my account and I'll deal with VirtualBox later.

Could some kind soul tell me what the heck I have to do to get a flash drive mounted so I can read and write to it, please (and what other groups do ordinary users need to belong to so stuff will work)?

Which version of VirtualBox have you got: OSE or PUEL?
Only the PUEL version offers USB support.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions

Have you tried plugging the flash drive in while logged in as root? If that works, it's a permission problem, if not it's something deeper.

If I plug my sony ericsson w902 in as a mass storage, it won't get mounted for some reason. I haven't figured it out yet, I only noticed the CPU wait goes extremely high. Maybe we have a quirk in the kernel. Or a device for that matter... Regular USB card reader seems to be working fine.

Yup, and it works; i.e., these two entries show up when mount is executed:
That begs the question, OK, so permission on what? /dev/sdb1, /proc/bus/usb (and which one of the four of them that are there), some other thing?

The further I go the behinder I seem to get...

Thanks.

As mentioned, the OSE version does not support USB --- directly. I get around that with a tiny bit of effort.

1. Insert the USB drive.

2. You mentioned a "little window" that shows the drive contents. Sounds like you are using KDE. Just ignore (Cancel) the window.

3. If you have not manually configured KDE for how the USB drive is mounted, then look in /media.

4. You'll need to know the mount location.

5. Start XP in VirtualBox.

6. In the VirtualBox Devices menu, select Shared Folders.

7. Select the "Add a new shared folder" button (the folder button with an addition sign).

8. In the subsequent dialog box, use the button next to the Folder Path text box to find the native USB path (for example, /media/usb).

9. Provide a shared folder name in the appropriate text box.

10. In XP, open file explorer.

11. From the Tools menu, select the "Map network drive..." option.

12. Use the Browse button to find the shared folder name.

13. Select a drive letter.

14. You now should be able to copy files from the USB drive to XP.

I needed more time to write these instructions then actually perform. Takes only a few seconds to perform.

You can make the shared folder permanent.

I hope that helps.

The version I have is the "closed-source binary" one; i.e., VirtualBox-3.0.6-52128-Linux_x86.run. The GUI shows USB devices and can read the specifications from the flash drive (so I think -- think! -- I've got the right version).

I think the problem is that "I" can't mount the flash drive with or without have VirtualBox running (root, of course, can and does); I plug it in, Hal sees it but I can't see any content on it, just ain't there, and no amount of searching, reading manual pages, cussing and throwing things against the wall has found the simple, elegant magic trick to allow an ordinary user to read and write a flash drive (and reading the Changes and Hints document hasn't helped either -- that stuff about not putting entries in /etc/fstab and fiddling with su bits [what su bit, dangit!). Tiz a puzzlement.

Thank you for the above -- I'm going to try it and, if it works, hey, a kludge that works is always better than fighting to the death with some blasted thing that ought to just work by default.

When you plug the flash drive and the "little window" (Device Notifier) pops up, all you should need to do is play your mouse cursor over the device in the Device Notifier and it should display "Open with Dolphin". Click with the mouse and your device should be automounted and a Dolphin window opened. Do you see this behaviour?
To unmount, you should be able just to click the arrow against the device in the Device Notifier that can be brought up just by playing your mouse cursor over the icon in the panel.

Uh, yeah -- yesterday, no, today (after my normal Sunday-morning reboot), yes. Yesterday, Dolphin opened with the content of my home directory (no matter what I did), after this morning's reboot, it shows the content of the flash drive -- magical mystical tour, that.

And the relevant lines from mount show up as
Magic!

OK, so now it's off to see if I can get VirtualBox and XP to see the thing...

Thanks again for your help.

Well, the shared folder trick works.

Thank you for your help.