virtualbox.org

RHEL 5.2 current, VirtualBox current (current means latest production release). USB devices are still "greyed out" when I use VirtualBox as a non-root user; I am running MS Win XP Pro SP 3 and have installed the latest tools for MS Win under VirtualBox. Cannot get MS Win guest to use a physical USB device. By comparison, USB works fine in VMWare
workstation on the same RHEL machine (I have both, but only run either VMware or VBox to get to MS Win -- each is using a different MS Win image file "disk").
How does one fix this? I have read both How To: Install VirtualBox on Fedora 10 [Tutorial] and Mounting USB on VirtualBox (Linux host). Neither solves the problem.

I have the exact same problem, but no one seems to know what the reason behind this is. I have posted a few notes on various forums but no one have come back to me. And as your post has now been unanswered for several days I guess there is not much to do about it.

It's a shame really, I would love to use my USB devices on my guest.

One strange thing for me though is that I have 1 USB device available and the others greyed out. I have absolutely no clue as to what is causing this, I have tried several filteres and nothing seems to work.

Sorry I can't help you either, just wanted to give you the heads up.

I just found the solution and posted it here:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 8355#58355
Again sorry that no one has gotten back to you with this simple answer

The reply below is NOT the answer:

I just found the solution and posted it here:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 8355#58355
Again sorry that no one has gotten back to you with this simple answer

-- As I stated in my query: I have read both How To: Install VirtualBox on Fedora 10 [Tutorial] and Mounting USB on VirtualBox (Linux host). Neither solves the problem.

The answer posted is: sudo /usr/sbin/adduser $( whoami ) vboxusers

Before my query, I already had checked that my account (the result of whoami) was in group vboxusers. On RHEL5 current this method DOES NOT WORK in so far as I can tell. However, whatever VMware Workstation does for this issue DOES WORK. The problem evidently is the following. When a new USB device physically is attached, modern Linux automatically checks what kind of device it is, and, for a file system device (e.g., a USB flash drive), automatically creates a mount point in /media/whatever, mounts it, and allows access for an ordinary end user on the Linux side. VMware Workstation intercepts this action, and allows the user instead to attach the device raw to the VMware virtual machine (the same concept as the VirtualBox virtual machine) in such a way that the guest OS (e.g., MS Win XP) "sees" the device as native hardware and does the appropriate action in the guest OS. In VirtualBox, the USB device must not be "greyed out" for one to manually attach the device to the virtual machine. As root in the host OS, there is no problem. As an ordinary user in the host OS, I cannot get the device to go non-grey under RHEL 5. If VirtualBox would do the same thing under the host OS that VMware does, the problem evidently would be solved -- USB devices are available "raw" to the guest OS under VMware on RHEL5.