virtualbox.org

Are there only certain USB devices that can be made available to the guest OS from the host? Must the host OS recognize the USB device in a certain way before it can share it with the guest?

My situation:
Host OS: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
Guest OS: Windows Server 2019 Essentials
USB device: PCAN-USB ~ USB to CAN Interface (https://www.peak-system.com/PCAN-USB.199.0.html?&L=1)

The manufacturer's website informs that the drivers for this device are built into the linux kernel.

Many Linux distributions, or rather the used Linux Kernels, already contain the drivers for PEAK-System's CAN interfaces. The CAN interfaces are then accessed via the common SocketCAN framework as network devices (aka netdev).

I don't really know much about this but I'm assuming the way the linux driver is implemented is the reason why the USB device is not showing up in the host OS as a "connected USB device" and that is why I'm unable to access the USB device from the guest?

iamthebull wrote:Are there only certain USB devices that can be made available to the guest OS from the host?

That would not make sense. VirtualBox has no idea what the device type is.

USB is essentially a specialized networking protocol, catering for one to one connections rather than one to many. As to what each device does, that would be like asking what each PC in a network does: that isn't really the business of the network card.

Of course, if you go for USB3 hardware and select a guest that doesn't talk USB3 (e.g. Win7 and earlier) then you'll be in trouble. I'm assuming you're beyond basic questions like that.

There are also group memberships to set up on a Linux host, and the extension pack to install. I assume you did all that too, though I notice you didn't mention it.

Any further discussion will require a VM log. Make sure the VM is fully shut down, then right click it in the manager UI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

I did set up the memberships and the extension pack was installed but I must not have rebooted the computer after I did that. Because the next day when I fired up my PC everything was working.

My original line of questioning was motivated by my experience with USB devices in Windows. When you plug in a USB device and there is no driver for that device installed then the device shows up in Device Manager as unknown and is unusable. I was thinking maybe this was why it was not working. That maybe Ubuntu did not 'recognize' the USB device and therefore could not pass control of it to the guest. That was not the case but that's just what I was thinking.

Thanks for reporting back.