Hi

I cannot detect any USB devices such as flash disks on EHCI controller(2) with VirtualBox 4.0.4 on a laptop running Fedora 13 with a Windows XP virtual machine. I can detect my Kensington Pocket mouse and built in camera which are attached to EHCI controller(1). Fedora 13 detects that all of these devices are attached. I am using the PUEL version of virtualbox and am a member of the vboxusers group. I have edited my /etc/fstab file to include the following statement:
none /dev/bus/usb usbfs devgid=525,devmode=664 0 0.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions. Thanks

PaulSF

If the host can detect the usb then the VM ought to be able to use the translation to use them. Just for grins run vm in root.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi Jefro,

I appreciate your suggestion and quick reply. I logged in as root and created a Windows XP VM. I plugged in the USB drive and it was recognized. A local linux expert suggested looking at permissions in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vboxdrv.rules. Here is the content of that file:

KERNEL=="vboxdrv", NAME="vboxdrv", OWNER="root", GROUP="root", MODE="0600"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ACTION=="add", RUN="/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxCreateUSBNode.sh $major
$minor $attr{bDeviceClass}"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", RUN="/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxCr
eateUSBNode.sh $major $minor $attr{bDeviceClass}"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ACTION=="remove", RUN="/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxCreateUSBNode.sh --r
emove $major $minor"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="remove", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", RUN="/usr/share/virtualbox/VBo
xCreateUSBNode.sh --remove $major $minor"

It appears that the owner and group are root instead of vboxusers although it seems to also be running a shell to create a USBNode. What should I try next?

PaulSF

Hi,

I have some further information. USB devices are detected in VirtualBox if you log in as root or as a regular user but only if the computer is shutdown and the devices are inserted before the computer is rebooted. If USB flash drives are inserted when the Fedora 13 OS is running, Fedora will recognize them. However VirtualBox does not see them and it does not matter if you are root or a regular user.

PaulSF

I have solved my problem by carefully reading the Virtual Box 4.0 install notes and realizing that in previous version of virtual box it was necessary to add a line to /etc/fstab which read

none /dev/bus/usb usbfs devgid=525,devmode=664 0 0.

However version 4.0 no longer uses usbfs. When I commented the above line out in /etc/fstab the problem was solved and I can now have virtual box recognize and mount usb drives.

PaulSF