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Old 02-13-2016, 11:51 AM   #1
Skatman88
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Allowing USB pass-through for VitualBox on Centos


Hi all,

I'm running VirtualBox and want to allow my clients to access my USB drives as they are bootable and have the required .iso's installed as a bootable partition. My question is, how do I allow the VMWare clients access to them as when I try to add them in the client set up area, they are not present.

I'm running VirtualBox 5.0.14 and Centos 7.2.1511 (Core) with the 3.10.0-327.4.5.el7.x86_64 kernel.

Any info would be much appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Skat
 
Old 02-13-2016, 12:24 PM   #2
michaelk
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You state your running Virtualbox but have VMWare clients? Is that a typographical error?

Not sure I exactly understand your question. You can manually add USB devices in the guest menu under the guests devices pull down menu or add a USB filter in the USB setup section for your guest so that it will be automatically connected when it starts.

Since you mentioned a bootable USB drive, it is not possible for a USB device to be accessible by both the host and client at the same time. As far as I know you can not boot a guest from a USB device. You can load the ISO file in the virtual CD drive and when you start the guest it will boot first.

Last edited by michaelk; 02-13-2016 at 12:26 PM.
 
Old 02-13-2016, 09:38 PM   #3
jefro
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The host is Centos and you have some usb's that have what I can't figure out exactly.

Are they bootable and also have an iso image on them as in grub4dos bootable?

In some cases you can get a usb attached to client OS's at boot. It will take control in settings from the host. You can also use the usb in some vm's as a virtual drive. That is use the entire usb as one would use a virtual hard drive file. Not a standard deal and could be disaster if you access it from host and client at same time. I know they have been working on getting an attached usb to boot a vm but not sure if that is out yet.

Not sure who these users are either and how they access this data.
 
Old 02-14-2016, 05:08 AM   #4
Skatman88
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
You state your running Virtualbox but have VMWare clients? Is that a typographical error?
Sorry yes. I was using VMWare client as in "virtual client". They are VirtualBox clients, just a mistake.

Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
Not sure I exactly understand your question. You can manually add USB devices in the guest menu under the guests devices pull down menu or add a USB filter in the USB setup section for your guest so that it will be automatically connected when it starts.
The USB devices are not populating the pull down menu in VirtualBox Manager.

Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
Since you mentioned a bootable USB drive, it is not possible for a USB device to be accessible by both the host and client at the same time. As far as I know you can not boot a guest from a USB device. You can load the ISO file in the virtual CD drive and when you start the guest it will boot first.
The host OS is installed on the HDD, however I'm trying to make the virtual clients boot from USB.
 
Old 02-14-2016, 05:12 AM   #5
Skatman88
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro View Post
The host is Centos and you have some usb's that have what I can't figure out exactly.
A bootable iso image so that my virtual clients can boot from them in order to install the OS. They were made using LinuxLiveUSB or Rufus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro View Post
Are they bootable and also have an iso image on them as in grub4dos bootable?
Not sure what Grub4dos is? But they are a bootable USB made from a .iso image.
 
Old 02-14-2016, 05:18 AM   #6
michaelk
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Not sure why I could not find this yesterday...

http://www.howtogeek.com/187721/how-...in-virtualbox/

I forgot to mention that you need to install guest additions in order to see USB devices in the pull down menu.

What distributions are you trying to install?

Last edited by michaelk; 02-14-2016 at 05:21 AM.
 
Old 02-14-2016, 07:53 AM   #7
Habitual
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skatman88 View Post
A bootable iso image so that my virtual clients can boot from them in order to install the OS.
Virtualbox can do this without any USBs attached.
It can boot the bootable.iso directly to install the OS.

Last edited by Habitual; 06-19-2016 at 07:47 AM.
 
Old 02-15-2016, 05:54 AM   #8
Skatman88
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
Not sure why I could not find this yesterday...

http://www.howtogeek.com/187721/how-...in-virtualbox/

I forgot to mention that you need to install guest additions in order to see USB devices in the pull down menu.

What distributions are you trying to install?
Thanks for that, however this is using Windows as the host rather than Linux (Specifically CentOS 7). I tried that command
Code:
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename C:\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive#
but it threw up an error. When I get back tonight I'll post the error.

Skat
 
Old 02-15-2016, 05:55 AM   #9
Skatman88
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Habitual View Post
Virtualbox can do this without any USBs attached.
It can boot the bootable.iso directly to install the OS.
That's interesting. I'll give that a go when I get home. Cheers!
 
Old 02-15-2016, 08:46 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Skatman88 View Post
That's interesting. I'll give that a go when I get home. Cheers!
Sure. I forgot press F12 when you start the appliance/application/guest and choose 'c' for CDROM.
and off you go.

Good Luck.
 
Old 02-16-2016, 02:44 AM   #11
Skatman88
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Didn't get chance last night.

I'll report back tonight!
 
Old 02-16-2016, 08:21 AM   #12
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We're here all week. Try the veal.
 
  


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