VB 1.5.6: USB suddenly not available

Post by **LFS-Nr-3305** » 3. Nov 2008, 20:55

Hi,
have been using VB 1.5.6 since February 2008 on this machine, Open Suse 10.3 (and have hat experience for years on the old one). It is mainly installed for running my USB scanner (Canon 2400ED, which will not run under vuescan without it's Windows driver).
Now suddenly all USB sticks, scanner, printer and other USB devices are shown as "keine USB-Geräte angeschlossen" (no devices attached).

The output of "VBoxManage list usbhost" is:

VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.6
(C) 2005-2008 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.

Host USB Devices:

UUID: e556fa21-592d-4681-7fb3-0145c592e05b
VendorId: 0x090c (090C)
ProductId: 0x1000 (1000)
Revision: 17.0 (1700)
Product: MediBase
SerialNumber: AA04012700007791
Address: /proc/bus/usb/002/003
Current State: Unavailable

VirtualBox run as root *does* work as usual:
Current State: Busy

Now, what Crime did I commit that my VB stopped working?! I habe been used to right-click on the USB icon on the left site of the footer of the VB window and all USB devices are shown in black in thin fonts, then I click on the one I wish to use and it will show in thick fonts.

Since February, I did install another VM (so I had a legal W2K plus a legal XP), installed and de-installed lots of other ones (slipstreamed XP) and plugged in an USB HDD. But now all USB sticks and powered-on USB devices are shown in gray and clicking on them does not make them available. I can not image that any of the steps taken during the set-up of VB in February are connected with the problem.

The Checkbox with USB is activated as always, and the one with EHCI Controller is not, and never has been; it does not make a difference concerning the actual problem if I do, anyway.

I did not fiddle with anything like the vboxusers group (GID = 1000). It is existing, and fstab has the line:

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=1000,devmode=0664 0 0

(I did change something concerning USB today, had to enable my USB HDD with NTFS by adding a NTFS policy in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/ but the problem with VB arised weeks ago).

I would be grateful if somebody could direct me to the solution. By googling and searching, I could not find a similar problem after the users system once had been enabled for USB, and I did try to check that the groups and file permissions are set as necessary.

Post by **LFS-Nr-3305** » 4. Nov 2008, 23:05

Thank you to the 31 people (at this moment) who bothered to look at my question.
In the meantime I noticed that, if VB is run as normal user, I even can not move my USB mouse inside or outside VB, until I cause Windows to shut down by using the keyboard.
I would be really happy if somebody finds a link or has a hint how to find the reason. Must be some Error I was not able to find to this moment, or maybe some unexpected reaction when I added a HAL rule for my external USB HDD, or maybe after I set up the loop device for an encrypted directory. Can't remember any significant changes in my system before the problem arised.

Post by **LFS-Nr-3305** » 5. Nov 2008, 15:05

Ok, so there seems to be no solution. I set up VMWare in the meantime (still trying to figure out how to install my guest system there...). Maybe I must go back to Crossover and to Dual boot solutions... seems more reliable to me, lost already half a working week on this sole issue (which I could not really afford

).

fretless · Post by **fretless** » 8. Nov 2008, 14:04

A tentative solution (it works for me) would be to change the ownership of the /proc/bus/usb tree at boot.
At the end of the mountdevsubfs.sh magic I added the line:
chown -R username:vboxusers /proc/bus/usb

Alternatives could be to change permissions on the tree to give everyone access (666).

A combination would be useful if VB is needed for more than one user (as chown by itself would only serve one user). Only changing the group to vboxusers and changing permissions to 664.

Hope that helps.

Post by **LFS-Nr-3305** » 8. Nov 2008, 23:12

Thank you very much. I did try the chown by hand, to some effect (did not know where to find that magic in Suse). Mouse kept working until I powered on my USB-Scanner, freezing only then and not immediately when I started my Virtualbox. The effect, of course, was as always. As Vuescan would even resist to a kill-task, I had to re-boot as usual.
I did not try the chmod on the proc/bus/usb tree because I was not too sure if I would be able to restitute the previous state. Seems actual permissions are 311(?) but I'm not doing tasks like these frequently so I'd rather not risk more damage to my system.
In the meantime, however, I succeded in installing VMWare player. Works like a charm with my USB Scanner and does show USB Sticks as "available", too. It was not too difficult. Vmware Server did work only once, never got any connection with the web interface (on the local machine) after re-start and did not find my CD-ROM anyway. VMWare player would not install either with Yast2 (which is broken anyway most of the time) nor with Zypper, which seems to be irritated by the wrapper to the .bundle executive. Zypper could not find the file, Yast2 showed it as installed but it was not there. After un-installing the non-existent Player with yast2 and installing it with rpm -Uhv it worked. Had to use a tool to be able to make the config and virtual machine files and install my OS in it, because VMWare player is not meant to do it stand-alone, but everything went very smoothly.
Thanks again to anybody who bothered to read my question. Will report back to this forum if I ever find out what happened in the first place.
Edit: VMWare on Suse 10.3 does run only once, then the vmon device is'nt created again. Lots of other users seem to have the same problem. I won't have the time to edit the config files as adviced on some forums, even if I knew what I'm doing - which is not really the case

. So I'm back to Virtualbox, working as root. Probably my next set-up will be Windows as Host and some Linux VM for browsing and e-mail...