USB problems Virtualbox 3 on Fedora 11

[drsys]

i really dont understand why the virtualbox coders can't work on the issue with the usb devices on fedora 11 and previous versions .
Any usb device mounted can't be selectable in vbox ,they appear but are faded in the guest os . The host os user is in the vboxusers group and i've tried putting filters in the guest vbox settings unsuccesfully . Guest additions is installed on the guest OS.
This is a very critical issue for someone who uses Fedora and wants to use Vbox commercial version.
Why isnt there a nice howto so that Fedora users can get help?
I switched back to good old Vmware workstation in which everything works perfectly well until this issue is solved
If someone knows a simple workaround for vbox 3 and fedora 11 that would be very helpfull
thanks

[jdonaldson]

I have the same problem. I've tried virtualbox 3 PUEL on Fedora 11 and OpenSuse 11.1 and I cannot get usb to work. I've tried every fix listed on the forums with no luck. I'm wondering if it has something to do with my hardware. I'm trying to get it to work on a dell D410 latitude laptop.

[mooninite]

OP, if you bothered searching you would have found half a dozen answers for your "problem."

VirtualBox attempts to read/write to your USB devices using the /proc filesystem.

You have to setup your fstab to allow read/write access to the USB /proc device nodes like so:

Code: Select all

none	/sys/bus/usb/drivers	usbfs	devgid=501,devmode=664	0	0

Change "devgid=501" to the group number of your user. It's usually 500, so you would use "devgid=500" instead.

An alternative is to write a feature request asking the Sun/Oracle folks to use libusb-1.0 instead.

This is my one and only post in this thread. If you can't get it working then it's a PEBKAC.

[jdonaldson]

Thanks for your reply. I did try your recommended solution and I am still getting the same results. I had tried this solution before, but used the uid of the virtualbox users group instead of the user I was logged in as. The virtualbox server can see the usb devices and I have tried using filters, without filters, and even a blank filter as suggested in the forums but the usb devices still appear as grey to the guest. I did verify that I am using the PUEL version and not OSE. I agree with you that it is most likely a problem with me, but I just don't know what to check next.

Thanks again for your help.

[hank_se]

In fact VirtualBox already uses libusb, it's the distros that mounts usbfs under /proc/bus/usb that prevents VirtualBox from using it. See from the manual:

On newer Linux hosts, VirtualBox accesses USB devices through special files in the file system. When VirtualBox is installed, these are made available to all users in the vboxusers system group. In order to be able to access USB from guest systems, make sure that you are a member of this group.
On older Linux hosts, USB devices are accessed using the usbfs file system. Therefore, the user executing VirtualBox needs read and write permission to the USB file system. Most distributions provide a group (e.g. usbusers) which the VirtualBox user needs to be added to. Also, VirtualBox can only proxy to virtual machines USB devices which are not claimed by a Linux host USB driver. The Driver= entry in /proc/bus/usb/devices will show you which devices are currently claimed. Please refer to Section 11.5.7, “USB not working” also for details about usbfs.

And from this ticket:http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3041

andyc: /proc/bus/usb is deprecated, and most people have already got rid of it. If VBox finds it mounted, it uses legacy code to handle USB. We do this to avoid breaking existing working setups. Otherwise we use newer, alternative code.

There are solutions for this in resent threads at this forum.

[jdonaldson]

I got it working! In addition to adding the recommended line to fstab I also had to comment out the following lines in rc.sysinit.

if [ ! -d /proc/bus/usb ]; then
modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
else
mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
fi

Thanks again for your help.

[drsys]

The information found in several threads is scattered ,maybe virtualbox is for more advanced users who can find the solution easily and not for linux starters like me + the virtualbox guys cant bother to write a descent howto on how to make their code work on the second most popular distro which is fedora ,since they cant fix the bug in the code .
And it is one actually since other products don't have an issue with the usb devices at all and they work easily on all popular distros .
I hope someone polite enough gentleman can write a Step by Step HOWTO for Fedora 11 so that people like me with not enough experience are not going to get stressed enough to abandon.
We like Virtualbox 3 , we like it's free and opensource ,this is the reason we choose this one and not other commercial software , but the least can somebody expect is that the basic stuff like his devices are working on the guest by default out of the box ,specially on popular distros

[hank_se]

I can agree about the HOWTO's, they are really beginning to be outdated. Now this problem with usb is not a bug in VirtualBox its the distros that use old outdated settings in the config files. The solution for your system is in the post above your's, comment out those lines to look like this:

#if [ ! -d /proc/bus/usb ]; then
#modprobe usbcore >/dev/null 2>&1 && mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
#else
#mount -n -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
#fi

But don't make any typos in this file you'll lock yourself out.
And forget about adding a line to fstab, its not needed.

[drsys]

Thanks Hank , it worked fine
it should be stated though somewhere in the official Virtualbox site , lots of users have this problem

[hank_se]

Wouldn't it be better to bring the issue up in your distributions forum and maybe even bring it to the developers and ask them why they use this old method. There are dists that do fine without mounting usbfs this way, I know of two opensuse and ubuntu. I wouldn't be surprised if they have simply overlooked it.

[mooninite]

Wouldn't it be better to bring the issue up in your distributions forum and maybe even bring it to the developers and ask them why they use this old method. There are dists that do fine without mounting usbfs this way, I know of two opensuse and ubuntu. I wouldn't be surprised if they have simply overlooked it.

I've brought[1] it to the attention of the Fedora world today.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora- ... 01128.html

[drsys]

Since this is the case Fedora Developers should fix this one . Lots of people use Fedora , and many of them obviously want to use Virtualbox

[tvirtualbox]

what (and where) is the opensuse (11.1) equivalent of the fedora "rc.sysinit" file?

Thanks
Tom

[hank_se]

Oh opensuse doesn't suffer from this problem, they got their own, but you can fix that by adding the followinfg file /etc/udev/rules.d/11-vboxdrv.rules with the following content:

KERNEL=="vboxdrv", NAME="vboxdrv", OWNER="root", GROUP="root", MODE="0600"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0664"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", NAME="VirtualBox/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0664"

It seems it will be working without mods in the upcoming 11.2!

[tvirtualbox]

my opensuse64 11.1 suffers from this problem. mouse, keyboard and scanner (but not the printer) are there, but are greyed out (when I hit left-ctrl+L to get the host menu in the guest)

I would try modifying the "rc.sysinit" if I only knew the suse equivalent of it.

T


4:~> VBoxManage list usbhost
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.4
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Host USB Devices:

UUID: 30a2fc9b-d657-4fca-ad92-2b96ea71dd91
VendorId: 0x03f0 (03F0)
ProductId: 0x7317 (7317)
Revision: 1.0 (0100)
Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product: HP LaserJet P3005
SerialNumber: CNJ1F72247
Address: sysfs:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb5/5-4/5-4.1//device:/dev/bus/usb/005/018
Current State: Available

UUID: df0e243b-1181-413f-bfad-7cd0cfba7578
VendorId: 0x413c (413C)
ProductId: 0x2011 (2011)
Revision: 89.0 (8900)
Manufacturer: Dell
Product: Dell Multimedia Pro Keyboard
Address: sysfs:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1.1//device:/dev/bus/usb/003/003
Current State: Unavailable

UUID: 9a5aefaa-75a7-430f-b1f2-c30d43784389
VendorId: 0x413c (413C)
ProductId: 0x3016 (3016)
Revision: 0.9 (0009)
Product: Dell Premium USB Optical Mouse
Address: sysfs:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb1/1-1//device:/dev/bus/usb/001/004
Current State: Unavailable