[SOLVED] VirtualBox: USB device "is being exclusively used by the host computer"
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In short, USB devices are no longer greyed out when using the original configuration.
In detail ...
The fstab change in the last post was a workaround, not a fix, so I backed it out and investigated further.
After renaming /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vboxdrv.rules to 91-vboxdrv.rules and rebooting the host, the problem was fixed. This suggested a rules order dependency so it should be possible to identify the rule causing the problem by changing <nn> in <nn>-vboxdrv.rules. Fortunately I decided to put it back to 10-vboxdrv.rules to start with as a "null test" to confirm the problem. Much to my surprise the problem was still fixed and stayed fixed on re-plugging the test device and on rebooting the host. The problem had been only very slightly intermittent so there was good confidence the problem was actually fixed.
I do not know of any mechanism by which moving the rule to (almost) the end of the rules order and putting it back to the original position would fix anything but that is what happened unless it was pure co-incidence and something else fixed it. The only possible "something else" I am aware of was routine Slackware maintenance (upgraded to mozilla-firefox-3.6.2-i686-1, openssl-0.9.8n-i486-1_slack13.0, openssl-solibs-0.9.8n-i486-1_slack13.0 and proftpd-1.3.3-i486-2_slack13.0) but I do not know that any of those packages is used by VirtualBox.
Glad it worked for you After changing the rule file back to 10-vboxdrv.rules it worked for a while and then broke again. I was in a hurry so just put the rule back to 91-vboxdrv.rules and it worked again. Later I put it back to 60-vboxdrv.rules where it has been working for a few weeks now. I'll give it a while longer and, if it's still working OK I'll try 51-vboxdrv.rules -- progressively halving the rule set to identify the rule that causes the breakage.
EDIT: above should be 66-vboxdrv.rules, not 60-vboxdrv.rules.
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